Global climate impact of land-surface change driven by radiative effects
Abstract
A robust proportionality between radiative forcing and global-mean temperature has been established for most climate drivers. However, land-surface changes are considered an exception due to their potential to alter surface hydrology, introducing non-radiative effects that may rival those from surface albedo changes. Here, comparing Earth-system-model simulations with large-scale perturbations of surface albedo and water availability, we find that the spatially integrated biophysical climate impact is similarly dominated by radiative processes and scales approximately linearly with the resulting shifts in planetary albedo, implying a ~ 0.4 K surface temperature response per W m ⁻² change in top-of-atmosphere net short-wave radiation. Thus, while non-radiative effects strongly influence local temperatures, their net contribution to the global-mean signal is negligible. The planetary-albedo response is primarily governed by regional cloud-cover characteristics, resulting in a substantially stronger temperature response to land-surface change in mid- and high-latitude regions than in the tropics and subtropics.
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BibTeX
@article{vrese2026global,
title = {{Global climate impact of land-surface change driven by radiative effects}},
author = {Philipp de Vrese and Victor Brovkin and Moritz Günther and Sarah M. Kang and Thomas Raddatz and Wim Thiery and Yi Yao},
journal = {Nature Communications},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-77834-0},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-77834-0},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Global climate impact of land-surface change driven by radiative effects
AU - Philipp de Vrese
AU - Victor Brovkin
AU - Moritz Günther
AU - Sarah M. Kang
AU - Thomas Raddatz
AU - Wim Thiery
AU - Yi Yao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
JO - Nature Communications
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-77834-0
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-77834-0
AB - A robust proportionality between radiative forcing and global-mean temperature has been established for most climate drivers. However, land-surface changes are considered an exception due to their potential to alter surface hydrology, introducing non-radiative effects that may rival those from surface albedo changes. Here, comparing Earth-system-model simulations with large-scale perturbations of surface albedo and water availability, we find that the spatially integrated biophysical climate impact is similarly dominated by radiative processes and scales approximately linearly with the resulting shifts in planetary albedo, implying a ~ 0.4 K surface temperature response per W m ⁻² change in top-of-atmosphere net short-wave radiation. Thus, while non-radiative effects strongly influence local temperatures, their net contribution to the global-mean signal is negligible. The planetary-albedo response is primarily governed by regional cloud-cover characteristics, resulting in a substantially stronger temperature response to land-surface change in mid- and high-latitude regions than in the tropics and subtropics.
SN - 2041-1723
ER -