Abstract:
Human land-use activities have resulted in large changes to the Earth surface, with resulting implications for climate. In the future, land-use activities are likely to intensify to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) aims to further advance understanding of the broad question of impacts of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) as well as more detailed science questions to get at process-level attribution, uncertainty, and data requirements in more depth and sophistication than possible in a multi-model context to date. There is a focus on separation and quantification of the effects on climate from LULCC relative to all forcings, separation of biogeochemical from biogeophysical effects of land use, the unique impacts of land-cover change versus land-management change, modulation of land-use impact on climate by land-atmosphere coupling strength, and the extent that impacts of enhanced CO2 concentrations on plant photosynthesis are modulated by land use. LUMIP involves three major sets of science activities: (1) development of an updated and expanded historical and future land-use dataset, (2) model experiments designed to address LUMIP questions, and (3) development of metrics and diagnostic protocols that quantify model performance with respect to LULCC. Experiments include idealized coupled and land-only model simulations designed to advance process-level understanding of LULCC climate impacts, with a focus on the impact of land management. Additional experiments quantify the historic impact of land use and the potential for future land management decisions to aid in mitigation of climate change. Here, we will present initial results from the LUMIP simulations.
What is the Joint Oslo Seminar (JOS):
Atmospheric and climate sciences have a stronghold in Oslo among the four institutions University of Oslo, the Meteorological Institute, CICERO and NILU. This joint seminar invites renowned international experts to contribute to an informal series of lectures, meant to create interaction with the Oslo atmospheric and climate science community on recent highlights and analysis in the field. All seminars will be held on Thursdays (Noon -1pm) and lunch (sandwiches) will be served on a “first-come-first-served”-basis.