Work package 1 – Experimental facilities

The research will be based on experimental manipulation of climatic factors in the field or in controlled environments. The experimental tools will be:

• New facility for experimental manipulation at the field scale
• Controlled environments
• Existing field scale facilities

New facility for experimental manipulation
at the field scale

WP1 is organizing a new Danish field manipulation site. The manipulation will be conducted in a semi-natural ecosystem with relatively low vegetation. Three factors affecting the terrestrial vegetation significantly will be altered in relation to current climate change prediction models. The factors are atmospheric CO₂ concentration, temperature and precipitation.

Climate change scenarios

The atmospheric CO₂ concentration will increase in the future, but the concentrations are tightly related to emission scenarios. The concentration will increase all over the globe and only small regional variations primarily related to seasonality are expected. In 2070 the IPCC models predict concentrations between 380 and 640 ppm. In relation to these predictions the manipulations with elevated CO₂ within CLIMAITE will employ concentrations of CO₂ at around 510 ppm. This correspond to an annual increment of 2 ppm, which is a continuation of the current yearly increase and is within the concentration increment range behind the DMI scenario. Based on the scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) has developed a climate change scenario for Denmark for 2070-2100 with respect to air temperature and precipitation based on “business as usual”. Predictions are, that the average temperature will increase 2-4 °C and the precipitation pattern will change. The temperature increase will be higher in the spring, summer and autumn compared to the winter and the minimum temperature will increase more than the maximum temperature meaning that the night temperatures will increase more that the daytime temperatures as has already been seen (IPCC 2001). The annual precipitation patterns will change and in particularly increase the precipitation by 10-20% during the winter and correspondingly reduce the precipitation during the summer, which is likely to increase the frequency of drought periods (Christensen and Christensen, 2002; J.H. Christensen, personal communication).