New Publication: Climate and atmospheric drivers of historical terrestrial carbon uptake in the province of British Columbia, Canada

PCIC's Arelia Werner is a co-author of a recent paper in the discussion section of the journal Biogeosciences. In the paper, Peng et al. (2013) use the Canadian Terrestiral Ecosystem Model to investigate the effects of climate change and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations on the amount of carbon that has been drawn down by plants in British Columbia since 1900. They find that the effects of climate change and the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide on plants have contributed to them drawing down about 44 more grams of carbon per square metre, every year since the 1980s, compared to pre-industrial conditions. This translates out to about 41 trillion grams of carbon per year, three-quarters of which is attributed to the changing climate and one-quarter of which is attributed to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.

This paper is available through our Publications Library.

Peng, Y., Arora, V. K., Kurz, W. A., Hember, R. A., Hawkins, B., Fyfe, J. C., and Werner, A. T. 2013: Climate and atmospheric drivers of historical terrestrial carbon uptake in the province of British Columbia, Canada, Biogeosciences Discussion, 10, 13603-13638, doi:10.5194/bgd-10-13603-2013.