Motivation
Worldwide action to achieve a climate-resilient and sustainable world is more urgent than previously thought. Advancing carbon neutrality is the key but requires complex and fundamental transitions in human systems and ecosystems at a new depth and scale.
Land carbon cycle under climate change
On the side of carbon sink, Prof. Laibo Liu’s lab works on land because it has mitigated about 30% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the past six decades but there is no consensus on how long this land carbon sink may continue to be sustained under climate change.
To help resolve this, we have led a series of studies to understand and constrain uncertainties of climate-carbon feedbacks. For instance, we demonstrated the increasing drought impacts on tropical land sink under climate change, highlighting the increasing vulnerability of future land carbon efficiency to climate extremes (Liu et al., 2023 Nature); we developed a novel approach to reconcile a long-standing debate regarding dryness stress on land carbon sink (Liu et al., 2020 Nature Communications). Ours studies improve the understanding of process controlling land carbon sink and allow a better management of climate risk on land carbon sink.
Selected Publications
Laibao Liu*, Philippe Ciais, Mengxi Wu, Ryan S. Padrón, Pierre Friedlingstein, Jonas Schwaab, Lukas Gudmundsson, and Sonia I. Seneviratne. 2023. Increasingly negative tropical water–interannual CO2 growth rate coupling. Nature 618 (7966):755-760. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06056-x [pdf]
Laibao Liu*, Lukas Gudmundsson, Mathias Hauser, Dahe Qin, Shuangcheng Li, and Sonia I. Seneviratne*. 2020. Soil moisture dominates dryness stress on ecosystem production globally. Nature Communications 11 (1):4892. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18631-1 [pdf]
Laibao Liu*, Rosie A. Fisher, Hervé Douville, Ryan S. Padrón, Alexis Berg, Jiafu Mao, Andrea Alessandri, Hyungjun Kim, and Sonia I. Seneviratne. 2024. No constraint on long-term tropical land carbon-climate feedback uncertainties from interannual variability. Communications Earth & Environment 5 (1):348. doi: 10.1038/s43247-024-01504-6 [pdf]
Net-zero energy system under climate change
On the side of carbon source, Prof. Laibo Liu’s lab works on the energy system because it has been accounted for 75% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions but it remain elusive on how to safely achieve net-zero energy system transition under climate change.
To help resolve this, we have led a series of studies to provide climate services and development strategies for weather and climate dependent wind and solar energy systems. For instance, with synergy to China Meteorological Administration, we provided an up-to-date assessment of China’s wind and solar energy resource at fine scale (60min and 3km) and develop an innovative approach to spatially optimize wind and solar power plants in China to achieve carbon neutrality (Liu et al., 2022 RCR); we provided a comphrehensive asessment of climate change impacts on global wind and solar energy system and raised early warning of climate extreme risks for energy system planners (Liu et al., 2023 Nature Energy). Our studies accelerate and safeguard the transition to net-zero energy systems under climate change.
Selected Publications
Laibao Liu*, Gang He, Mengxi Wu*, Gang Liu, Haoran Zhang, Ying Chen, Jiashu Shen, and Shuangcheng Li. 2023. Climate Change Impacts on Planned Supply–Demand Match in Global Wind and Solar Energy Systems. Nature Energy 8(8): 870–880. doi: 10.1038/s41560-023-01304-w [pdf]
Laibao Liu*#, Yang Wang*#, Zheng Wang, Shuangcheng Li*, Jiangtao Li, Gang He, Yan Li, Yanxu Liu, Shilong Piao, Ziqi Gao, Rui Chang, Wenjun Tang, Kejun Jiang, Shijin Wang, Jun Wang, Lin Zhao, and Qingchen Chao. 2022. Potential Contributions of Wind and Solar Power to China’s Carbon Neutrality. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 180: 106155. doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106155 (#, contribute equally) [pdf]
Laibao Liu, Zheng Wang, Yang Wang*, Jun Wang, Rui Chang, Gang He, Wenjun Tang, Ziqi Gao, Jiangtao Li, Changyi Liu, Lin Zhao, Dahe Qin, Shuangcheng Li*. 2020. Optimizing Wind/Solar Combinations at Finer Scales to Mitigate Renewable Energy Variability in China. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 132: 110151. doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2020.110151 [pdf]