Code and Model results for Soil organic carbon is a key determinant of CH4 sink in global forest soils

<p>This publication contains code and data of a biogeochemistry model, TEM-SOC, that includes a function related to soil organic carbon (SOC) for the estimation of global forest methane soil sinks. You will find four files when downloading the bundle: (1) One file (TEM_for_tutorial.zip) contains C++ codes and a compiler for default TEM model, (2) one file (TEM-SOC_code.zip) contains C++ codes and a compiler for the new model, TEM-SOC, (3) one file (TEM_compileandrun_guide_manual_Liu_Oh.pdf) is a guideline for the model, and (4) another file (TEMDEF_TEMSOC_output.nc) is model outputs of global forest methane oxidation from 2000 to 2016 from the default (TEM-DEF) and new (TEM-SOC) model.</p>

<p>Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a primary regulator of the forest–climate feedback. However, its indicative capability for the soil CH4 sink is poorly understood due to the incomplete knowledge of the underlying mechanisms. Therefore, SOC is not explicitly included in the current model estimation of the global forest CH4 sink. Here, utilizing in-situ observations, global metadata analysis, and process-based modeling, we provide evidence to support the notion that SOC constitutes an important variable that governs the forest CH4 sink. A larger CH4 sink was observed with increasing SOC content on regional and global scales. The revised model with SOC function better represents the field observation data and estimates a 39% larger global forest CH4 sink than the model without SOC function (24.27 versus 17.46 Tg CH4 yr−1), further narrowing the gap between bottom-up and top-down global soil sink estimations. Our results highlight the indicative capability of SOC for the forest CH4 sink, suggesting that the effect of SOC needs to be incorporated into the estimation model to better understand the future CH4 dynamics and to constrain the global CH4 budget.</p>