Widespread seasonal compensation effects of spring warming on northern plant productivity

Wolfgang Buermann (), Matthias Forkel, Michael O’Sullivan, Stephen Sitch, Pierre Friedlingstein, Vanessa Haverd, Atul K. Jain, Etsushi Kato, Markus Kautz, Sebastian Lienert, Danica Lombardozzi, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Hanqin Tian, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Dan Zhu, William K. Smith and Andrew D. Richardson
Additional contact information
Wolfgang Buermann: School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds
Matthias Forkel: Department for Geodesy and Geoinformation
Michael O’Sullivan: School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds
Stephen Sitch: University of Exeter
Pierre Friedlingstein: University of Exeter
Vanessa Haverd: CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Atul K. Jain: University of Illinois
Etsushi Kato: Institute of Applied Energy
Markus Kautz: Forest Research Institute Baden-Württemberg
Sebastian Lienert: Physics Institute, University of Bern
Danica Lombardozzi: Climate and Global Dynamics, Terrestrial Sciences Section
Julia E. M. S. Nabel: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Hanqin Tian: Auburn University
Andrew J. Wiltshire: Met Office Hadley Centre
Dan Zhu: LSCE CEA-CNRS-UVSQ
William K. Smith: University of Arizona
Andrew D. Richardson: Northern Arizona University

Nature, 2018, vol. 562, issue 7725, 110-114

Abstract: Abstract Climate change is shifting the phenological cycles of plants1, thereby altering the functioning of ecosystems, which in turn induces feedbacks to the climate system2. In northern (north of 30° N) ecosystems, warmer springs lead generally to an earlier onset of the growing season3,4 and increased ecosystem productivity early in the season5. In situ6 and regional7–9 studies also provide evidence for lagged effects of spring warmth on plant productivity during the subsequent summer and autumn. However, our current understanding of these lagged effects, including their direction (beneficial or adverse) and geographic distribution, is still very limited. Here we analyse satellite, field-based and modelled data for the period 1982–2011 and show that there are widespread and contrasting lagged productivity responses to spring warmth across northern ecosystems. On the basis of the observational data, we find that roughly 15 per cent of the total study area of about 41 million square kilometres exhibits adverse lagged effects and that roughly 5 per cent of the total study area exhibits beneficial lagged effects. By contrast, current-generation terrestrial carbon-cycle models predict much lower areal fractions of adverse lagged effects (ranging from 1 to 14 per cent) and much higher areal fractions of beneficial lagged effects (ranging from 9 to 54 per cent). We find that elevation and seasonal precipitation patterns largely dictate the geographic pattern and direction of the lagged effects. Inadequate consideration in current models of the effects of the seasonal build-up of water stress on seasonal vegetation growth may therefore be able to explain the differences that we found between our observation-constrained estimates and the model-constrained estimates of lagged effects associated with spring warming. Overall, our results suggest that for many northern ecosystems the benefits of warmer springs on growing-season ecosystem productivity are effectively compensated for by the accumulation of seasonal water deficits, despite the fact that northern ecosystems are thought to be largely temperature- and radiation-limited10.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0555-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:562:y:2018:i:7725:d:10.1038_s41586-018-0555-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0555-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().