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Terrestrial ecosystems are an important part of Earth systems, and they are undergoing remarkable changes in response to global warming. This study investigates the response of the terrestrial vegetation distribution and carbon fluxes to global warming by using the new dynamic global vegetation model in the second version of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Earth System Model (CAS-ESM2). We conducted two sets of simulations, a present-day simulation and a future simulation, which were forced by the present-day climate during 1981–2000 and the future climate during 2081–2100, respectively, as derived from RCP8.5 outputs in CMIP5. CO2 concentration is kept constant in all simulations to isolate CO2-fertilization effects. The results show an overall increase in vegetation coverage in response to global warming, which is the net result of the greening in the mid-high latitudes and the browning in the tropics. The results also show an enhancement in carbon fluxes in response to global warming, including gross primary productivity, net primary productivity, and autotrophic respiration. We found that the changes in vegetation coverage were significantly correlated with changes in surface air temperature, reflecting the dominant role of temperature, while the changes in carbon fluxes were caused by the combined effects of leaf area index, temperature, and precipitation. This study applies the CAS-ESM2 to investigate the response of terrestrial ecosystems to climate warming. Even though the interpretation of the results is limited by isolating CO2-fertilization effects, this application is still beneficial for adding to our understanding of vegetation processes and to further improve upon model parameterizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past several decades, dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) have been the most widely used and appropriate tool at the global scale to investigate vegetation-climate interactions. At the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, a new version of DGVM (IAP-DGVM) has been developed and coupled to the Common Land Model (CoLM) within the framework of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Earth System Model (CAS-ESM). This work reports the performance of IAP-DGVM through comparisons with that of the default DGVM of CoLM (CoLM-DGVM) and observations. With respect to CoLMDGVM, IAP-DGVM simulated fewer tropical trees, more “needleleaf evergreen boreal tree” and “broadleaf deciduous boreal shrub”, and a better representation of grasses. These contributed to a more realistic vegetation distribution in IAP-DGVM, including spatial patterns, total areas, and compositions. Moreover, IAP-DGVM also produced more accurate carbon fluxes than CoLM-DGVM when compared with observational estimates. Gross primary productivity and net primary production in IAP-DGVM were in better agreement with observations than those of CoLM-DGVM, and the tropical pattern of fire carbon emissions in IAP-DGVM was much more consistent with the observation than that in CoLM-DGVM. The leaf area index simulated by IAP-DGVM was closer to the observation than that of CoLM-DGVM; however, both simulated values about twice as large as in the observation. This evaluation provides valuable information for the application of CAS-ESM, as well as for other model communities in terms of a comparative benchmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]