This dataset contains MPI-ESM-1.2-LR output from the work package 1 (WP1) CROP scenario of idealized constant global cropland expansion. The simulation branches from the 2014 CMIP6 historical concentration-driven simulation and spans 160 years (2015-01-01 to 2174-12-31), with anthropogenic (trace gases, aerosols, population density) and natural forcings (solar radiation, wildfire, lightning, natural aerosols) held constant at 2014 levels.
In the CROP scenario, land cover changes to cropland PFTs (C3 and C4 crops) on the entire fraction of hospitable land of each land grid cell. This is applied in a checkerboard-like pattern to half of all land grid cells within the first to fifth year of the simulation by providing specific land use transition files. Basically, all PFTs that are neither cropland (such as pasture, grassland, shrubland, and forest) nor bare soil (unhospitable land) were reduced to the minimum fraction value (fract_small = 1e-10). The remaining crop fractions are increased such that fractions within a grid cell add up to 100 %. As the bare soil fraction is preserved, the resulting land cover map only contains crop PFTs and bare soil.
Generally, we ran the land model JSBACH3.2 with the following options:
- use_dynveg = false
- use_disturbance = true
- lcc_forcing_type = transitions
- lcc_scheme = 2
The approach mimics cropland expansion across all vegetated areas but avoids cropland being established in e.g. desert, high-altitude and tundra regions (unhospitable land). The checkerboard-like pattern, with its homogeneous distribution of changed and unchanged grid cells, allows the application of an established method to separate local and nonlocal biogeophyiscal as well as biogoechemical effects of this land cover change (see Winckler et al., 2017 (doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0067.1), De Hertog et al., 2023 (doi: 10.5194/esd-14-629-2023), and Guo et al., 2025 (doi: 10.5194/esd-16-631-2025)).