BGD Biogeosciences Discussions BGD Biogeosciences Discuss. 1810-6285 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/bgd-6-10121-2009 Local ecosystem feedbacks and critical transitions in the climate Rietkerk M. 1 Brovkin V. 2 van Bodegom P. M. 3 Claussen M. 2 Dekker S. C. 1 Dijkstra H. A. 4 Goryachkin S. V. 5 Kabat P. 6 van Nes E. H. 7 Neutel A.-M. 8 Nicholson S. E. 9 Nobre C. 10 Petoukhov V. 11 Provenzale A. 12 Scheffer M. 7 Seneviratne S. I. 13 Department of Environmental Sciences, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands The Land in the Earth System, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany Free University Amsterdam, Department of Systems Ecology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Department of Physics and Astronomy, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, 3584 CC, Utrecht, The Netherlands Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 117901, Russia Earth System Science and Climate Change Group, Wageningen University, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, Wageningen University, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingly Rd., Cambridge, CB3 OET, UK Department of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA CPTEC/INPE, Sao Paulo, Brazil Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14412 Postdam, Germany Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, CNR, 10133 Turin, Italy Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH, CHN~N11, Universitätsstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland 28 10 2009 6 5 10121 10136 Copyright: © 2009 M. Rietkerk et al. 2009 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://bg.copernicus.org/preprints/6/10121/2009/bgd-6-10121-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://bg.copernicus.org/preprints/6/10121/2009/bgd-6-10121-2009.pdf

Global and regional climate models, such as those used in IPCC assessments, are the best tools available for climate predictions. Such models typically account for large-scale land-atmosphere feedbacks. However, these models omit local vegetation-environment feedbacks that are crucial for critical transitions in ecosystems. Here, we reveal the hypothesis that, if the balance of feedbacks is positive at all scales, local vegetation-environment feedbacks may trigger a cascade of amplifying effects, propagating from local to large scale, possibly leading to critical transitions in the large-scale climate. We call for linking local ecosystem feedbacks with large-scale land-atmosphere feedbacks in global and regional climate models in order to yield climate predictions that we are more confident about.

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