Impacts of temperature extremes on European vegetation during the growing season

Abstract

Abstract. Temperature is a key factor controlling plant growth and vitality in the temperate climates of the midlatitudes like in vast parts of the European continent. Beyond the effect of average conditions, the timings and magnitudes of temperature extremes play a particularly crucial role, which needs to be better understood in the context of projected future rises in the frequency and/or intensity of such events. In this work, we employ event coincidence analysis (ECA) to quantify the likelihood of simultaneous occurrences of extremes in daytime land surface temperature anomalies (LSTAD) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). We perform this analysis for entire Europe based upon remote sensing data, differentiating between three periods corresponding to different stages of plant development during the growing season. In addition, we analyze the typical elevation and land cover type of the regions showing significantly large event coincidences rates to identify the most severely affected vegetation types. Our results reveal distinct spatio-temporal impact patterns in terms of extraordinarily large co-occurrence rates between several combinations of temperature and NDVI extremes. Croplands are among the most frequently affected land cover types, while elevation is found to have only a minor effect on the spatial distribution of corresponding extreme weather impacts. These findings provide important insights into the vulnerability of European terrestrial ecosystems to extreme temperature events and demonstrate how event-based statistics like ECA can provide a valuable perspective on environmental nexuses.

Vegetation vulnerability to drought on southeastern Europe

“…As stated earlier, the relation between growth of a certain tree species (Sidor et al, 2015), and the presence of different land cover types in the region is mostly dependent on elevation. In any case, all land cover types present an area of negative correlations in June which 325 increases with altitude, and likewise, all land cover types present an area of positive correlations in July which decreases with altitude, which is in agreement with previous results obtained in the Carpathians by Sidor et al, 2015, and on areas situated at lower altitudes by Baumbach et al (2017). Nonetheless, the different land cover types do present different responses to drought conditions, and so the area of negative correlations is always larger on the case of needle leaved forests and smaller for agricultural land, whereas for the case of positive correlations, agricultural land and grassland present the largest areas and 330 needle leaved forests present the smallest.…”

Assessing the Impacts of Extreme Climate Events on Vegetation Activity in the North South Transect of Eastern China (NSTEC)

“…For instance, the vegetation growth of grasslands and croplands could be inhibited by changes in extreme high temperature events and extreme precipitation events in the Inner Mongolia Plateau and the Northeast Plain [32]. Similar results were also found in the case study of European in Baumbach et al [70].…”

Satellite Observations of the Contrasting Response of Trees and Grasses to Variations in Water Availability

“…See supporting information Text 2 for details on the data treatment (Baumbach et al, 2017;Braswell et al, 1997;Ceccherini et The resulting deviations from the average temporal behavior originate from shifts in phenology and will be a natural reaction of the vegetation to meteorological variations.…”