Summer drought weakens land surface cooling of tundra vegetation

Nils Rietze*, Jakob J. Assmann, Elena Plekhanova, Kathrin Naegeli, Alexander Damm, Trofim C. Maximov, Sergey V. Karsanaev, Geert Hensgens, Gabriela Schaepman-Strub*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Siberia experienced a prolonged heatwave in the spring of 2020, resulting in extreme summer drought and major wildfires in the North-Eastern Siberian lowland tundra. In the Arctic tundra, plants play a key role in regulating the summer land surface energy budget by contributing to land surface cooling through evapotranspiration. Yet we know little about how drought conditions impact land surface cooling by tundra plant communities, potentially contributing to high air temperatures through a positive plant-mediated feedback. Here we used high-resolution land surface temperature and vegetation maps based on drone imagery to determine the impact of an extreme summer drought on land surface cooling in the lowland tundra of North-Eastern Siberia. We found that land surface cooling differed strongly among plant communities between the drought year 2020 and the reference year 2021. Further, we observed a decrease in the normalized land surface cooling (measured as water deficit index) in the drought year 2020 across all plant communities. This indicates a shift towards an energy budget dominated by sensible heat fluxes, contributing to land surface warming. Overall, our findings suggest significant variation in land surface cooling among common Arctic plant communities in the North-Eastern Siberian lowland tundra and a pronounced effect of drought on all community types. Based on our results, we suggest discriminating between functional tundra plant communities when predicting the drought impacts on energy flux related processes such as land surface cooling, permafrost thaw and wildfires.

Original languageEnglish
Article number044043
Pages (from-to)1-13
Number of pages13
JournalEnvironmental Research Letters
Volume19
Issue number4
Early online date22 Mar 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd

Keywords

  • Arctic
  • drones
  • drought
  • heatwave
  • land surface temperature
  • Siberia
  • tundra

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