Coupled simulation of climate and vegetation dynamics

Experiments are performed with the climate model of the Institute of Numerical Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences (INM RAS), integrated jointly with the Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM). It is shown that the coupled model reproduces the distribution of basic plant functional types around the world quite well. In simulations of climate for the 21st century, this model predicts changes in dominant plant types and in the total area occupied by vegetation regionally. However, it does not reproduce the significant inverse influence that vegetation succession has on the simulated climate.