The feedback couplings between climate and ecosystems are of potentially huge magnitude, with future consequences for climate change that are possibly comparable to the direct climatic effects of anthropogenic alterations to the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the land surface. Yet these feedbacks occur on time scales that fall in the gap between paleo-climate and modern observational phenomena and in the spatial gap between experimental plots and global model grid cells, thus challenging our capacity to predict them reliably. How can we better mind these gaps?
Results/Conclusions
I present observational and experimental data on climate-ecosystem feedbacks that confirm and sharpen our understanding of the magnitude of the scaling dilemma, I review and comment critically on a variety of suggested approaches to making progress in the face of scale mismatches, and I conclude with a discussion of the implications at the intersection of science and policy of what may be irreducible uncertainties in our capacity to predict the consequences of future ecological feedback mechanisms across spatial and temporal scales of concern.
