The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends

Guillermo Murray-Tortarolo; Pierre Friedlingstein; Stephen Sitch; Sonia I. Seneviratne; Imogen Fletcher; Brigitte Mueller; Peter Greve; Alessandro Anav; Yi Liu; Anders Ahlström; Chris Huntingford; Sam Levis; Peter Levy; Mark Lomas; Benjamin Poulter; Nicholas Viovy; Sonke Zaehle; Ning Zeng

doi:10.1002/2016GL068240

The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends

Guillermo Murray-Tortarolo, Pierre Friedlingstein, Stephen Sitch, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Imogen Fletcher, Brigitte Mueller, Peter Greve, Alessandro Anav, Yi Liu, Anders Ahlström, Chris Huntingford, Sam Levis, Peter Levy, Mark Lomas, Benjamin Poulter, Nicholas Viovy, Sonke Zaehle, Ning Zeng

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66 Scopus citations

Abstract

We analyze the impacts of changing dry season length and intensity on vegetation productivity and biomass. Our results show a wetness asymmetry in dry ecosystems, with dry seasons becoming drier and wet seasons becoming wetter, likely caused by climate change. The increasingly intense dry seasons were consistently correlated with a decreasing trend in net primary productivity (NPP) and biomass from different products and could potentially mean a reduction of 10-13% in NPP by 2100. We found that annual NPP in dry ecosystems is particularly sensitive to the intensity of the dry season, whereas an increase in precipitation during the wet season has a smaller effect. We conclude that changes in water availability over the dry season affect vegetation throughout the whole year, driving changes in regional NPP. Moreover, these results suggest that usage of seasonal water fluxes is necessary to improve our understanding of the link between water availability and the land carbon cycle.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2632-2639
Number of pages	8
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	43
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068240
State	Published - Mar 28 2016
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

drought
dry season length
land carbon cycle

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10.1002/2016GL068240

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Murray-Tortarolo, G., Friedlingstein, P., Sitch, S., Seneviratne, S. I., Fletcher, I., Mueller, B., Greve, P., Anav, A., Liu, Y., Ahlström, A., Huntingford, C., Levis, S., Levy, P., Lomas, M., Poulter, B., Viovy, N., Zaehle, S., & Zeng, N. (2016). The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(6), 2632-2639. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068240

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title = "The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends",

abstract = "We analyze the impacts of changing dry season length and intensity on vegetation productivity and biomass. Our results show a wetness asymmetry in dry ecosystems, with dry seasons becoming drier and wet seasons becoming wetter, likely caused by climate change. The increasingly intense dry seasons were consistently correlated with a decreasing trend in net primary productivity (NPP) and biomass from different products and could potentially mean a reduction of 10-13\% in NPP by 2100. We found that annual NPP in dry ecosystems is particularly sensitive to the intensity of the dry season, whereas an increase in precipitation during the wet season has a smaller effect. We conclude that changes in water availability over the dry season affect vegetation throughout the whole year, driving changes in regional NPP. Moreover, these results suggest that usage of seasonal water fluxes is necessary to improve our understanding of the link between water availability and the land carbon cycle.",

keywords = "drought, dry season length, land carbon cycle",

author = "Guillermo Murray-Tortarolo and Pierre Friedlingstein and Stephen Sitch and Seneviratne, \{Sonia I.\} and Imogen Fletcher and Brigitte Mueller and Peter Greve and Alessandro Anav and Yi Liu and Anders Ahlstr{\"o}m and Chris Huntingford and Sam Levis and Peter Levy and Mark Lomas and Benjamin Poulter and Nicholas Viovy and Sonke Zaehle and Ning Zeng",

year = "2016",

month = mar,

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doi = "10.1002/2016GL068240",

language = "English",

volume = "43",

pages = "2632--2639",

journal = "Geophysical Research Letters",

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Murray-Tortarolo, G, Friedlingstein, P, Sitch, S, Seneviratne, SI, Fletcher, I, Mueller, B, Greve, P, Anav, A, Liu, Y, Ahlström, A, Huntingford, C, Levis, S, Levy, P, Lomas, M, Poulter, B, Viovy, N, Zaehle, S & Zeng, N 2016, 'The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends', Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 2632-2639. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068240

TY - JOUR

T1 - The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends

AU - Murray-Tortarolo, Guillermo

AU - Friedlingstein, Pierre

AU - Sitch, Stephen

AU - Seneviratne, Sonia I.

AU - Fletcher, Imogen

AU - Mueller, Brigitte

AU - Greve, Peter

AU - Anav, Alessandro

AU - Liu, Yi

AU - Ahlström, Anders

AU - Huntingford, Chris

AU - Levis, Sam

AU - Levy, Peter

AU - Lomas, Mark

AU - Poulter, Benjamin

AU - Viovy, Nicholas

AU - Zaehle, Sonke

AU - Zeng, Ning

PY - 2016/3/28

Y1 - 2016/3/28

N2 - We analyze the impacts of changing dry season length and intensity on vegetation productivity and biomass. Our results show a wetness asymmetry in dry ecosystems, with dry seasons becoming drier and wet seasons becoming wetter, likely caused by climate change. The increasingly intense dry seasons were consistently correlated with a decreasing trend in net primary productivity (NPP) and biomass from different products and could potentially mean a reduction of 10-13% in NPP by 2100. We found that annual NPP in dry ecosystems is particularly sensitive to the intensity of the dry season, whereas an increase in precipitation during the wet season has a smaller effect. We conclude that changes in water availability over the dry season affect vegetation throughout the whole year, driving changes in regional NPP. Moreover, these results suggest that usage of seasonal water fluxes is necessary to improve our understanding of the link between water availability and the land carbon cycle.

AB - We analyze the impacts of changing dry season length and intensity on vegetation productivity and biomass. Our results show a wetness asymmetry in dry ecosystems, with dry seasons becoming drier and wet seasons becoming wetter, likely caused by climate change. The increasingly intense dry seasons were consistently correlated with a decreasing trend in net primary productivity (NPP) and biomass from different products and could potentially mean a reduction of 10-13% in NPP by 2100. We found that annual NPP in dry ecosystems is particularly sensitive to the intensity of the dry season, whereas an increase in precipitation during the wet season has a smaller effect. We conclude that changes in water availability over the dry season affect vegetation throughout the whole year, driving changes in regional NPP. Moreover, these results suggest that usage of seasonal water fluxes is necessary to improve our understanding of the link between water availability and the land carbon cycle.

KW - drought

KW - dry season length

KW - land carbon cycle

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U2 - 10.1002/2016GL068240

DO - 10.1002/2016GL068240

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84988352967

SN - 0094-8276

VL - 43

SP - 2632

EP - 2639

JO - Geophysical Research Letters

JF - Geophysical Research Letters

IS - 6

ER -

The dry season intensity as a key driver of NPP trends

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Keywords

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