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Future reversal of warming-enhanced vegetation productivity in the Northern Hemisphere

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 581–586 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climatic warming has greatly increased vegetation productivity in the extratropical Northern Hemisphere since the 1980s, but how long this positive relationship will continue remains unknown. Here we show changes in the effect of warming on Northern Hemisphere summer gross primary productivity for 2001–2100 using Earth system model outputs. The correlation between summer gross primary productivity and temperature decreases in temperate and boreal regions by the late twenty-first century, generally becoming significantly negative before 2070 in regions <60° N, though Arctic gross primary productivity continues to increase with further summer warming. The time when the correlation becomes negative is generally later than the time when summer temperature exceeds the optimal temperature for vegetation productivity, suggesting partial mitigation of the negative vegetation impacts of future warming with photosynthetic thermal acclimation. Our findings indicate that vegetation productivity could be impaired by climate change in the twenty-first century, which could negatively impact the global land carbon sink.

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Fig. 1: Spatial pattern of the partial correlation between summer GPP and temperature (RGPP–Temp).
Fig. 2: Spatiotemporal pattern of the emergent time of significantly negative RGPP–Temp (tnegative) during the twenty-first century.
Fig. 3: Spatiotemporal patterns of the timing (texceed) when summer temperature exceeds the optimal temperature for vegetation productivity (Topt).

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Data availability

All data used in this study are openly available from the following: CMIP6 (https://esgf-node.ipsl.upmc.fr/search/cmip6-ipsl/); FLUXCOM GPP (http://fluxcom.org/CF-Download/); contiguous solar-induced fluorescence (https://osf.io/8xqy6/); CRU/NCEP temperature (https://dataguru.lu.se/app) and Topt (Huang et al15; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0838-x). Any additional information may be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

All computer codes used in this study are available via GitHub at https://github.com/miniminiminimiffy/Productivity-Temperature.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41988101) and the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research programme (grant no. 2019QZKK0405). A.C. acknowledges the support from a US Department of Energy grant (DE-SC0022074). B.M.R. thanks support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) and Carbon Cycle Science programs (NNX17AE13G) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grant #8414).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sino–French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Yichen Zhang, Shilong Piao, Xiangyi Li & Xu Lian

  2. State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shilong Piao

  3. College of Marine Life Sciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Yan Sun

  4. Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA

    Brendan M. Rogers

  5. CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China

    Zhihua Liu

  6. Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anping Chen

  7. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Valles, Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

  8. CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

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  1. Yichen Zhang
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Contributions

S.P. designed the research, Y.Z. performed the analysis and drafted the figures, Y.Z. and S.P. wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and to the text.

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Correspondence to Shilong Piao.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Alexander Koch and Sassan Saatchi for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–12 and Tables 1–3.

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Zhang, Y., Piao, S., Sun, Y. et al. Future reversal of warming-enhanced vegetation productivity in the Northern Hemisphere. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 581–586 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01374-w

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