Uncertainty and emergent constraints on enhanced ecosystem carbon stock by land greening

However, whether and to what extent global land greening enhances ecosystem carbon stock remains uncertain. Here, using 40 global models, we first detected a positive correlation between the terrestrial ecosystem carbon stock and leaf area index (LAI) over time.

Then, we diagnose the source of uncertainty of simulated the sensitivities of ecosystem carbon stock to LAI based on a traceability analysis. We found that the sensitivity of gross primary productivity (GPP) to LAI is the largest contributor to the model uncertainty in more than 60% of the vegetated grids. Using the ensemble of four long-term global data sets of GPP and three satellite LAI products from 1982 to 2014, we provided an emergent constraint on the ecosystem carbon stock increase as 0.75 +/- 0.46 kg C m(-2) per unit LAI over global land areas.