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Climate Sensitivity and Ecoclimate Sensitivity: Theory, Usage, and Past Implications for Future Biospheric Responses

Current Climate Change Reports volume 8, pages 1–16 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Two usages of ‘climate sensitivity’ co-exist: one climatological and one ecological. The earlier climatological usage quantifies the sensitivity of global mean surface temperature to atmospheric CO2, with formal variants differing by timescale and processes. The ecological usage, renamed here as ecoclimate sensitivity, is defined as a change in an ecological response variable per unit climate change. The two concepts are treated very differently: climatologists have focused on reducing uncertainty of global climate sensitivity estimates, while ecologists have focused on the multivariate processes governing variations in ecoclimate sensitivity across drivers, response variables, and scales. Because radiative forcing scales logarithmically to [CO2]atm, ecological impacts per ppm [CO2]atm often also scale logarithmically, although non-linear ecoclimate sensitivities can alter this expectation. Critically, past estimates of climate and ecoclimate sensitivity carry an implicit tradeoff, in which smaller estimates of climate sensitivity indicate higher ecoclimate sensitivities. For the LGM, estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity have narrowed to 2.4 to 4.5 °C, while high ecoclimate sensitivity is indicated by post-glacial biome conversions, continental-scale species range shifts, and high community turnover. We introduce a new term, ecocarbon sensitivity, defined as the product of global climate sensitivity, local ecoclimate sensitivity, and a global-to-local climate scaling factor. Given past biospheric transformations, we can expect high sensitivity of the terrestrial biosphere to current rises in [CO2]atm, a conclusion that is insensitive to estimates of climate sensitivity. The next frontier is better quantification of the processes governing the form and variations of ecoclimate and ecocarbon sensitivity across systems and scales.

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Acknowledgements

The ideas for this paper germinated during a visiting scholarship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Durham University. This paper benefitted from discussions with Matt McGlone, Adrian George, and Suzette Flantua. David Fastovich kindly assisted with figure development for Figures 2 and 4, while Sydney Widell assisted with the data compilation for Figure 3.

Funding

JWW was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (1855781, 1948926) and the Kellett Fellowship at UW-Madison.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    John W. Williams

  2. Department of Biosciences, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Brian Huntley

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Bergen, Norway and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Alistair W. R. Seddon

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JWW led the writing and development of the paper, with all authors contributing to design and writing.

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Williams, J.W., Huntley, B. & Seddon, A.W.R. Climate Sensitivity and Ecoclimate Sensitivity: Theory, Usage, and Past Implications for Future Biospheric Responses. Curr Clim Change Rep 8, 1–16 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-022-00179-5

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