For years, carbon cycle scientists have sought to understand how a warming climate will impact the decay of soil carbon. However, there have been relatively few investigations of how soils will warm in comparison to the atmosphere. Three recent papers in American Geophysical Union journals have looked at expected soil warming by synthesizing predictions in the Climate Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). Collectively, these papers show that soil warming will keep pace with air warming except where snow and ice occur, and that the magnitude of soil warming in northern latitudes is uncertain due to model variability in snow and ice extent. They also show that a considerable portion of anthropogenic warming is being stored in deep soils, and that in comparison to observations, soil heat storage is underrepresented by land models. These studies highlight how important continued investigations of soil climatology are to understanding carbon cycling and Earth energy balance.

中文翻译：

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土壤会变暖多少？

多年来，碳循环科学家一直试图了解气候变暖将如何影响土壤碳的衰减。但是，相对于大气而言，关于土壤如何变暖的研究相对较少。美国地球物理联合会最近发表的三篇论文通过综合气候模型比对项目5（CMIP5）中的预测，对预期的土壤变暖进行了研究。总体而言，这些论文表明，除雪和冰发生的地方以外，土壤变暖将与空气变暖保持同步，并且由于冰雪范围的模型变化，北纬地区的土壤变暖幅度尚不确定。他们还表明，人为变暖的相当一部分存储在深层土壤中，与观测值相比，土地模型对土壤蓄热的描述不足。