ALBERT

Description: The mechanisms driving trends and variability of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for tundra in Alaska along the Beaufort, east Chukchi, and east Bering Seas for 1982–2013 are evaluated in the context of remote sensing, reanalysis, and meteorological station data as well as regional modeling. Over the entire season the tundra vegetation continues to green; however, biweekly NDVI has declined during the early part of the growing season in all of the Alaskan tundra domains. These springtime declines coincide with increased snow depth in spring documented in northern Alaska. The tundra region generally has warmed over the summer but intraseasonal analysis shows a decline in midsummer land surface temperatures. The midsummer cooling is consistent with recent large-scale circulation changes characterized by lower sea level pressures, which favor increased cloud cover. In northern Alaska, the sea-breeze circulation is strengthened with an increase in atmospheric moisture/cloudiness inland when the land surface is warmed in a regional model, suggesting the potential for increased vegetation to feedback onto the atmospheric circulation that could reduce midsummer temperatures. This study shows that both large- and local-scale climate drivers likely play a role in the observed seasonality of NDVI trends.

Description: Linkages between diminishing Arctic sea ice and changes in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems have not been previously demonstrated. Here, the authors use a newly available Arctic Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) dataset (a measure of vegetation photosynthetic capacity) to document coherent temporal relationships between near-coastal sea ice, summer tundra land surface temperatures, and vegetation productivity. The authors find that, during the period of satellite observations (1982–2008), sea ice within 50 km of the coast during the period of early summer ice breakup declined an average of 25% for the Arctic as a whole, with much larger changes in the East Siberian Sea to Chukchi Sea sectors (〉44% decline). The changes in sea ice conditions are most directly relevant and have the strongest effect on the villages and ecosystems immediately adjacent to the coast, but the terrestrial effects of sea ice changes also extend far inland. Low-elevation (70%). The NDVI has increased across most of the Arctic, with some exceptions over land regions along the Bering and west Chukchi Seas. The greatest change in absolute maximum NDVI occurred over tundra in northern Alaska on the Beaufort Sea coast [+0.08 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) NDVI units]. When expressed as percentage change, large NDVI changes (10%–15%) occurred over land in the North America High Arctic and along the Beaufort Sea. Ground observations along an 1800-km climate transect in North America support the strong correlations between satellite NDVI observations and summer land temperatures. Other new observations from near the Lewis Glacier, Baffin Island, Canada, document rapid vegetation changes along the margins of large retreating glaciers and may be partly responsible for the large NDVI changes observed in northern Canada and Greenland. The ongoing changes to plant productivity will affect many aspects of Arctic systems, including changes to active-layer depths, permafrost, biodiversity, wildlife, and human use of these regions. Ecosystems that are presently adjacent to year-round (perennial) sea ice are likely to experience the greatest changes.