Jäger et al. (2026) On the Robustness of Modeled Non-Local Temperature Effects of Historical Land Use Changes

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich)
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-02-01
• Authors: Felix Jäger, Petra Sieber, Isla R. Simpson, Peter Lawrence, David Lawrence, Sonia I. Seneviratne
• DOI: 10.3929/ethz-c-000796270

Research Groups

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided text, but the use of "Community Earth System Model 2 (CESM2)" suggests involvement of institutions associated with its development and use, such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and collaborating universities.

Short Summary

This paper demonstrates that historical land-use changes have driven robust regional non-local temperature signals, with warming up to 1 K and cooling up to 0.5 K, as shown by fully coupled CESM2 simulations. These regional effects are commensurate with historical temperature effects of all forcings, though they balance out globally.

Objective

• To robustly identify and quantify regional non-local temperature signals driven by historical land-use change using fully coupled Earth System Model simulations.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Regional and global.
• Temporal Scale: Historical period (1850-2014).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Community Earth System Model 2 (CESM2)
• Data sources: CESM2 large ensemble simulations, comparing "all forcings" versus "all-but-land-use-change forcings" scenarios.

Main Results

• Robust regional non-local temperature signals driven by land-use change are found in fully coupled CESM2 historical simulations.
• Regional non-local warming of up to more than 1 K and cooling of up to more than 0.5 K are observed.
• These modeled effects are commensurate with historical temperature effects of all forcings at regional scales.
• Regional non-local warming and cooling balance out in the global mean, resulting in an effect small compared to internal variability.
• The signal-to-noise ratio of spatially averaged signals was analyzed for its dependence on the number of ensemble members.
• The ability of signal separation techniques to distinguish different parts of the signal from each other and from internal variability was discussed.

Contributions

• Provides robust evidence of regional non-local temperature signals driven by historical land-use change using fully coupled Earth System Model simulations (CESM2), moving beyond limited observations and idealized simulations.
• Quantifies the magnitude of these non-local effects, demonstrating their regional significance comparable to the effects of all historical forcings.
• Analyzes the signal-to-noise ratio in large ensembles and discusses signal separation techniques, contributing to methodological advancements in attributing climate signals.

Funding

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Jäger2026Robustness,
  author = {Jäger, Felix and Sieber, Petra and Simpson, Isla R. and Lawrence, Peter and Lawrence, David and Seneviratne, Sonia I.},
  title = {On the Robustness of Modeled Non-Local Temperature Effects of Historical Land Use Changes},
  journal = {Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich)},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3929/ethz-c-000796270},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-c-000796270}
}