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Modelled suppression of boundary-layer clouds by plants in a CO2-rich atmosphere

Nature Geoscience volume 5, pages 701–704 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cumulus clouds in the atmospheric boundary layer play a key role in the hydrologic cycle, in the onset of severe weather by thunderstorms and in modulating Earth’s reflectivity and climate1. How these clouds respond to climate change, in particular over land, and how they interact with the carbon cycle are poorly understood2,3. It is expected that as a consequence of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations the plant stomata will close4,5, leading to lower latent heat fluxes and higher sensible heat fluxes. Here we show that this causes a decline in boundary-layer cloud formation in middle latitudes. This could be partly counteracted by the greater ability of a warmer atmosphere to take up water and by a growth in biomass due to CO2 fertilization6. Our results are based on a new soil–water–atmosphere–plant model supported by comprehensive observational evidence, from which we identify the dominant atmospheric responses to plant physiological processes. They emphasize the intricate connection between biological and physical aspects of the climate system and the relevance of short-term and small-scale processes in establishing this connection.

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Figure 1: Representation of the main processes and variables in the coupled surface–ABL dynamic system.
Figure 2: Diurnal variability of the coupled surface–ABL dynamic system under different scenarios.
Figure 3: Responses of the coupled surface–ABL dynamic system to rising CO2 and warmer temperatures.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN), F. Bosveld (KNMI) and A. Vermeulen (ECN) for making the Cabauw data available.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meteorology and Air Quality Section, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Jordi Vilà-Guerau de Arellano

  2. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

    Chiel C. van Heerwaarden

  3. Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, 55020 Mainz, Germany

    Jos Lelieveld

  4. The Cyprus Institute, 1645 Nicosia, Cyprus

    Jos Lelieveld

Authors
  1. Jordi Vilà-Guerau de Arellano
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  2. Chiel C. van Heerwaarden
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  3. Jos Lelieveld
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Contributions

J.V-G.d.A. and C.C.v.H. conceived and conducted the research. J.L. contributed to the analysis of the model results. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jordi Vilà-Guerau de Arellano.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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de Arellano, JG., van Heerwaarden, C. & Lelieveld, J. Modelled suppression of boundary-layer clouds by plants in a CO2-rich atmosphere. Nature Geosci 5, 701–704 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1554

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