Assessing the climatological stability of the Congo basin rainforest

The Congo basin forests play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle, hosting a carbon sink of more than 10% of the global sink. This carbon potential also appears more stable than those of comparable other tropical forests. However, despite its importance for global climate, the Congo basin forest is receiving much less scientific attention. Yet, in recent years the body of data and knowledge is reaching a critical level which allows a study on the stability of the Congo basin forest under present and future climates. Here we applied an advanced vegetation model (ED2) over the Congo basin forests and explored their potential (in)stability under different climate forcings. The main objective was to explore the climate sensitivity of the Congo basin forests in terms of functional composition and carbon balance. This allows to asses the risk of the rain forest to shift into a savanna type vegetation. We addressed this question by integrating for the first time observational meteorological data available over the Congo basin in order to evaluate global reanalysis and climate modelling datasets. This led to unique simulations of the vegetation changes observed during past decades as well as for potential climate futures.