Earth system model output of LAMACLIMA work package 1 (WP1): idealized global land-use scenarios of cropland expansion, re-/afforestation, irrigation, wood harvest, and reference control
Guo, Suqi et al.
Experiment
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Land use plays a critical role in global mitigation and local adaptation strategies. However, its impacts on local and remote climate and the carbon cycle remain poorly understood across Earth system models (ESMs). Work package 1 (WP1) simulations of LAMACLIMA project consist of land-use-induced climate and carbon change sensitivity experiments, through a coordinated ESM intercomparison. The scenarios do not represent plausible realizations under realistic socio-economic pathways. Instead, they simulate idealized constant global land-use changes under present-day environmental conditions. This approach has two advantages: 1. Simulating large-scale land-use changes increases the signal-to-noise ratio. While the idealized nature of the scenarios prevents conclusions about concrete realizations of future global land use, the higher signal-to-noise ratio improves our ability to evaluate the upper bound of land-use impacts. 2. Unlike historical land-use changes or realistic future scenarios, where changes occur in limited regions, our idealized global land-use changes allow for a comprehensive assessment and comparison of impacts worldwide. WP1 simulations use three ESMs: the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM) version 1.2 (Mauritsen et al., 2019), the Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 2 (Danabasoglu et al., 2020), and the European Community Earth System Model (EC-EARTH) version EC-Earth3-Veg (v3.3.3.1; Döscher et al., 2022). Due to ESM-specific characteristics and challenges during the implementation of the land-use change scenarios, the actual setup varies slightly across the ESMs. For details on specific implementations, see De Hertog et al. (2023) and Guo et al. (2025). Each ESM runs five simulations: four idealized constant global land-use scenarios and one reference control simulation (CTL). Simulations branch from the 2014 CMIP6 historical concentration-driven simulation and span 160 years, with anthropogenic (trace gases, aerosols, population density) and natural forcing (solar radiation, wildfire, lightning, natural aerosols) held constant at 2014 levels. The only varying forcing across scenarios is the prescribed land-cover and land-management changes. The CTL simulation keeps the land cover constantly at the 2014 level, without any land management (no irrigation or wood harvest). Within the cropland expansion (CROP) and re-/afforestation (FRST) scenarios, land cover changes to crops or forests on the entire hospitable land. This is applied to half of the land grid cells in a checkerboard-like pattern (see Winckler et al., 2017: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0067.1). For the cropland expansion with irrigation (IRR) scenario, the CROP scenario is used, with each model’s native irrigation scheme applied to all land-cover change grid cells. In the re-/afforestation with wood harvest (HARV) scenario, the FRST scenario is used, with intensive CMIP6 SSP5-8.5 end of century wood harvesting rates applied to all land-cover change grid cells after a 40-year forest build up period. For further details, see: De Hertog et al., 2023: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-629-2023 Guo et al., 2025: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/16/631/2025/
Guo, Suqi; Havermann, Felix; De Hertog, Steven; Luo, Fei; Manola, Iris; Thiery, Wim; Lejeune, Quentin; Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich; Pongratz, Julia; Seeberg, Gereon (2025). Earth system model output of LAMACLIMA work package 1 (WP1): idealized global land-use scenarios of cropland expansion, re-/afforestation, irrigation, wood harvest, and reference control. World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) at DKRZ. https://www.wdc-climate.de/ui/entry?acronym=LC_WP1