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Clouds and temperature drive dynamic changes in tropical flower production

Nature Climate Change volume 3, pages 838–842 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Tropical forests are incredibly dynamic, showing rapid and longer-term changes in growth, mortality and net primary productivity1,2,3. Tropical species may be highly sensitive to temperature increases associated with climate change because of their narrow thermal tolerances. However, at the ecosystem scale the competing effects of temperature, light and precipitation on tropical forest productivity have been difficult to assess. Here we quantify cloudiness over the past several decades to investigate how clouds, together with temperature and precipitation, affect flower production in two contrasting tropical forests. Our results show that temperature, rather than clouds, is critically important to tropical forest flower production. Warmer temperatures increased flower production over seasonal, interannual and longer timescales, contrary to recent evidence that some tropical forests are already near their temperature threshold4,5. Clouds were primarily important seasonally, and limited production in a seasonally dry forest but enhanced production in an ever-wet forest. A long-term increase in flower production at the seasonally dry forest is not driven by clouds and instead may be tied to increasing temperatures. These relationships show that tropical forest productivity, which is not widely thought to be controlled by temperature, is indeed sensitive to small temperature changes (1–4°C) across multiple timescales.

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Figure 1: Empirical relationships between flower production with clouds and temperature.
Figure 2: Long-term trends in flower production (solid line) and maximum temperature (dotted line) at BCI from 1987 to 2009.
Figure 3: Seasonal and interannual variation in cloudiness.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Knapp at NOAA NCDC for providing a beta version of the full GridSat data set, and D. K. Okamoto for input on statistical analyses, and are also grateful to H.G.B. This work was conducted as a part of the Forecasting Phenology Working Group supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), a Center funded by the NSF (Grant #EF-0553768), the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California. The BCI portion of the study was supported by funds from the Environmental Sciences Program and the Center for Tropical Forest Science of the Smithsonian Institution. At Luquillo research was supported by NSF grant DEB-0639393 and by NSF funds (BSR-8811902, DEB-9411973, DEB-008538, DEB-0218039 and DEB-0620910) to the Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research Program. S.P. was a Postdoctoral Associate supported by NCEAS. E.M.W. was supported by the NSERC CREATE training programme in biodiversity research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA

    Stephanie Pau

  2. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, California 93101, USA

    Stephanie Pau & James Regetz

  3. Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Elizabeth M. Wolkovich

  4. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York 10025, USA

    Benjamin I. Cook

  5. Ocean and Climate Physics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York 10964, USA

    Benjamin I. Cook

  6. Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 00931, Puerto Rico

    Christopher J. Nytch & Jess K. Zimmerman

  7. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Ancón 0843-03092, Panama

    S. Joseph Wright

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  6. Jess K. Zimmerman
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Contributions

S.P., B.I.C., E.M.W. and S.J.W. developed and designed the primary analyses. S.P. and J.R. analysed satellite data and developed cloud detection algorithms. J.K.Z., C.J.N. and S.J.W. curated and assisted with interpretation of the flower production and meteorological data. S.P. performed all analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and helped edit the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stephanie Pau.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Pau, S., Wolkovich, E., Cook, B. et al. Clouds and temperature drive dynamic changes in tropical flower production. Nature Clim Change 3, 838–842 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1934

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