Summer drought weakens land surface cooling of tundra vegetation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15544174 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nils Rietze (0000-0001-7232-7799, University of Zurich, corresponding author), Jakob J Assmann (0000-0002-3492-8419, University of Zurich), Elena Plekhanova (0000-0002-5727-9175, University of Zurich), Kathrin Naegeli (0000-0003-2443-7154, University of Zurich), Alexander Damm (0000-0001-8965-3427, University of Zurich), Trofim Maximov (0000-0001-7003-5653, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Trofim C Maximov, Sergey V Karsanaev (0000-0002-4055-381X, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Geert Hensgens (0000-0001-6511-7224, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Gabriela Schaepman‐Strub (0000-0002-4069-1884, University of Zurich) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 044043-044043 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Research Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326 |
| Publisher | IOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1088/1748-9326/ad345e |
| OpenAlex | W4392862774 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
Siberia experienced a prolonged heatwave in the spring of 2020, resulting in extreme summer drought and major wildfires in the North-Eastern Siberian lowland tundra. In the Arctic tundra, plants play a key role in regulating the summer land surface energy budget by contributing to land surface cooling through evapotranspiration. Yet we know little about how drought conditions impact land surface cooling by tundra plant communities, potentially contributing to high air temperatures through a positive plant-mediated feedback. Here we used high-resolution land surface temperature and vegetation maps based on drone imagery to determine the impact of an extreme summer drought on land surface cooling in the lowland tundra of North-Eastern Siberia. We found that land surface cooling differed strongly among plant communities between the drought year 2020 and the reference year 2021. Further, we observed a decrease in the normalized land surface cooling (measured as water deficit index) in the drought year 2020 across all plant communities. This indicates a shift towards an energy budget dominated by sensible heat fluxes, contributing to land surface warming. Overall, our findings suggest significant variation in land surface cooling among common Arctic plant communities in the North-Eastern Siberian lowland tundra and a pronounced effect of drought on all community types. Based on our results, we suggest discriminating between functional tundra plant communities when predicting the drought impacts on energy flux related processes such as land surface cooling, permafrost thaw and wildfires
Arctic · Atmospheric sciences · Biology · Climatology · Geography · Physical geography · Tundra · Vegetation (pathology · Climate change and permafrost · Cryospheric studies and observations · Environmental Science · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Ecology · Geology
The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979
A Multiscalar Drought Index Sensitive to Global Warming
Siberian taiga and tundra fire regimes from 2001–2020
Landscape-scale characterization of Arctic tundra vegetation composition, structure, and function with a multi-sensor unoccupied aerial system
Spatial variation in vegetation productivity trends, fire disturbance, and soil carbon across arctic-boreal permafrost ecosystems
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |