Dominant control of temperature on (sub-)tropical soil carbon turnover

Vera D. Meyer (), Peter Köhler, Nadine T. Smit, Julius S. Lipp, Bingbing Wei, Gesine Mollenhauer and Enno Schefuß ()
Additional contact information
Vera D. Meyer: University of Bremen
Peter Köhler: Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
Nadine T. Smit: University of Bremen
Julius S. Lipp: University of Bremen
Bingbing Wei: Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
Gesine Mollenhauer: University of Bremen
Enno Schefuß: University of Bremen

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Carbon storage in soils is important in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). However, the sensitivity of the soil-carbon turnover time (τsoil) to temperature and hydrology forcing is not fully understood. Here, we use radiocarbon dating of plant-derived lipids in conjunction with reconstructions of temperature and rainfall from an eastern Mediterranean sediment core receiving terrigenous material from the Nile River watershed to investigate τsoilin subtropical and tropical areas during the last 18,000 years. We find that τsoil was reduced by an order of magnitude over the last deglaciation and that temperature was the major driver of these changes while the impact of hydroclimate was relatively small. We conclude that increased CO2 efflux from soils into the atmosphere constituted a positive feedback to global warming. However, simulated glacial-to-interglacial changes in a dynamic global vegetation model underestimate our data-based reconstructions of soil-carbon turnover times suggesting that this climate feedback is underestimated.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59013-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59013-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59013-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().