I know, generally, climate models cover the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice-covered regions of the planet. But does the model consider the change in land-use of a particular region when estimating the projections for 100 years?
Intermediate complexity and general circulation model types for climate change consider changes in land use unlike the energy balance models. However, they require a lot of input parameters.
Climate change and land use changes are interrelated. So land use changes are bound to deviate the climate parameters to large extent and climate parameters are inputs for any climate model. All the climate models basically use the historical climate input so the land use change are automatically involved in the output provided by the climatic models...
Most models use fixed land surface characteristics for climate projections. Because, the input data required for land use transitions involves a complex interplay of many factors. For example, a land use or cover transition from bareground or natural forest to agricultural or urban requires huge estimations to be used for projections. Such estimations also impart huge uncertainty to the outputs of climate models. Thence, most prefer to fix the land use/ cover type fixed to the current scenario. Hopefully, with increased observation information and improved computational resources, future climate models may consider implementing these land use transitions in climate model simulations. For more information, please read https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212095517300858.
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