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  • Review Article
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Plant responses to changing rainfall frequency and intensity

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 5, pages 276–294 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Regardless of annual rainfall amount changes, daily rainfall events are becoming more intense but less frequent with anthropogenic warming. Larger rainfall events and longer dry spells have complex and sometimes opposing effects on plant photosynthesis and growth, challenging abilities to understand broader consequences on the carbon cycle. In this Review, we evaluate global plant responses to rainfall regimes characterized by fewer, larger rainfall events across evidence from field experiments, satellites and models. Plant function responses vary between −28% and 29% (5th to 95th percentile) under fewer, larger rainfall events, with the direction of response contingent on climate; productivity increases are more common in dry ecosystems (46% positive; 20% negative), whereas responses are typically negative in wet ecosystems (28% positive; 51% negative). Contrasting responses in dry and wet ecosystems are attributed to nonlinear plant responses to soil moisture driven by several ecohydrological mechanisms. For example, dry ecosystem plants are more sensitive to large rainfall pulses compared with wet ecosystem plants, partly driving dry ecosystem positive responses to fewer, larger rainfall events. Knowledge gaps remain over optimal rainfall frequencies for photosynthesis, the relative dominance of rainfall pulse and dry spell mechanisms and the disproportionate role of extreme rainfall pulses on plant function.

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Fig. 1: Fewer, larger rainfall events change hydrological conditions for plants.
Fig. 2: Global trends in daily rainfall event frequency and intensity on vegetated land surfaces.
Fig. 3: Approaches to understand plant response to fewer, larger rainfall events.
Fig. 4: Synthesis of plant responses to fewer, larger rainfall events.
Fig. 5: Mechanistic drivers of plant function under fewer, larger rainfall events.
Fig. 6: Observed and modelled plant response to large rainfall pulses.

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Data availability

CMIP6 rainfall projections can be obtained from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu. Observation-based rainfall data sets from MERRA, CPC and GPCC can be obtained from https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/reanalysis/MERRA-2/data_access, https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cpc.globalprecip.html and https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.gpcc.html, respectively. FLUXNET observations can be downloaded from https://fluxnet.org.

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Acknowledgements

The research of A.F.F. was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with NASA. A.F.F. was partly supported by a NASA Terrestrial Ecology scoping study for a dryland field campaign. A.G.K. was supported by NSF DEB 1942133 and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which, through its Working Group on Coupled Modelling, coordinated and promoted CMIP6. The authors thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) for archiving the data and providing access and the multiple funding agencies who support CMIP6 and ESGF. This work used eddy covariance data acquired and shared by the FLUXNET community, including AmeriFlux. The FLUXNET eddy covariance data processing and harmonization was carried out by the ICOS Ecosystem Thematic Center, AmeriFlux Management Project and Fluxdata project of FLUXNET, with the support of CDIAC, and the OzFlux, ChinaFlux and AsiaFlux offices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Andrew F. Feldman & Benjamin Poulter

  2. Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Andrew F. Feldman

  3. Department of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Xue Feng

  4. Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Xue Feng

  5. Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA

    Andrew J. Felton

  6. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Alexandra G. Konings

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

    Alan K. Knapp

  8. USDA Agricultural Research Service Southwest Watershed Research Center, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Joel A. Biederman

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  1. Andrew F. Feldman
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Contributions

A.F.F. led the Review and wrote the initial draft. X.F., A.J.F., A.G.K, A.K.K, J.A.B. and B.P. all contributed substantial edits to the initial outline, manuscript and figures. All authors contributed equally to the generation of the central ideas in the manuscript and initial figure concepts.

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Correspondence to Andrew F. Feldman.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Madelon Case, Rene Orth, Yuting Yang and Yao Zhang for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Glossary

C4 photosynthesis

An evolutionary adaptation of photosynthesis occurring mainly in some grass and crop species under which photosynthesis is more efficient because photorespiration is largely avoided.

CAM photosynthesis

An evolutionary adaptation of photosynthesis occurring mainly in plant species in arid environments that allows them to save water by only exchanging gases with the atmosphere at night.

Community composition

The species types and their relative abundance within a defined ecosystem, here referring specifically to plants.

Clausius–Clapeyron relationship

A thermodynamic equation that describes the nonlinear increase of saturation vapour pressure, or the capacity of air to hold water, with increases in air temperature.

Hadley and Walker cells

Some of the largest organized circulations of air in the atmosphere of the Earth that contribute substantially to weather and climate patterns of the Earth.

Interception

Rainfall that is captured and stored by vegetation, even briefly, such that it is prevented from infiltrating into the soil or running off of the ground surface.

Normalized difference vegetation index

A commonly used satellite-based vegetation index that estimates greenness at the top of the vegetation canopy based on satellite measurements in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Phenology

The annual cyclic nature of plant functioning, specifically referring to its periodic increase and decrease in functioning during similar months of each year.

Plant water status

A general indicator based on how much water is available for plants to use towards essential plant functions such as photosynthesis and transpiration.

Rainfall intensity

The rainfall rate or rainfall depth over a defined time period. The rainfall rate is often defined hourly across hydrological sciences, although it is designated to be daily in this Review.

Rooting profile

The distribution of the root volume of a plant across the soil depth.

Satellite-based vegetation indices

Vegetation metrics derived from satellite measurements that typically span large spatial extents, including vegetation areal cover, greenness, height, photosynthetic capacity, water content and others.

Soil moisture stress functions

An empirical relationship between decreasing soil moisture and decline in plant functions such as photosynthesis or transpiration.

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Feldman, A.F., Feng, X., Felton, A.J. et al. Plant responses to changing rainfall frequency and intensity. Nat Rev Earth Environ 5, 276–294 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00534-0

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