No abstract

Tropical rainforests play a central role in the Earth system by regulating climate, maintaining biodiversity, and sequestering carbon. They are under threat by direct anthropogenic impacts like deforestation and the indirect anthropogenic impacts of climate change. A synthesis of the factors that determine the net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide (NEE) at the site scale across different forests in the tropical rainforest biome has not been undertaken to date. Here, we study NEE and its components, gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) and ecosystem respiration (RE), across thirteen natural and managed forests within the tropical rainforest biome with 63 total site-years of eddy covariance data. Our results reveal that the five ecosystems with the largest annual gross carbon uptake by photosynthesis (i.e. GEP > 3000 g C m -2 y -1 ) have the lowest net carbon uptakeor even carbon lossesversus other study ecosystems because RE is of a similar magnitude. Sites that provided subcanopy CO2 storage observations had higher average magnitudes of GEP and RE and lower average magnitudes of NEE, highlighting the importance of measurement methodology for understanding carbon dynamics in ecosystems with characteristically tall and dense vegetation. A path analysis revealed that vapor pressure deficit (VPD) played a greater role than soil moisture or air temperature in constraining GEP under light saturated conditions across most study sites, but to differing degrees from -0.31 to -0.87 μmol CO2 m -2 s -1 hPa -1 . Climate projections from 13 general circulation models (CMIP5) under the representative concentration pathway that generates 8.5 W m -2 of radiative forcing suggest that many current tropical rainforest sites on the lower end of the current temperature range are likely to reach a climate space similar to present-day warmer sites by the year 2050, warmer sites will reach a climate not currently experienced, and all forests are likely to experience higher VPD. Results demonstrate the need to quantify if and how mature tropical trees acclimate to heat and water stress, and to further develop flux-partitioning and gap-filling algorithms for defensible estimates of carbon exchange in tropical rainforests.

Land management impacts atmospheric boundary layer processes, and recent trends reducing the practice of summer fallow have led to increases in precipitation and decreases in temperature in the Canadian Prairie provinces during summer. It is unclear if such trends also impact the hydrometeorology of the adjacent U.S. northern Great Plains, parts of which have seen similar changes in land management. Here, MERRA-2 reanalysis data, eddy covariance observations, and a mixed-layer (ML) atmospheric modeling framework are combined to demonstrate that the likelihood of convectively preconditioned conditions has increased by approximately 10% since the mid-1980s and is now more sensitive to further decreases in the Bowen ratio (Bo) and maximum daily net radiation in northeastern Montana. Convective season Bo in the study area has decreased from approximately 2 to 1 from the 1980s until the present, largely due to simultaneous increases in latent heat flux and decreases in sensible heat flux, consistent with observed decreases of summer fallow and increases in cropping. Daily net radiation has not changed despite a significant decrease in May and June humidity lapse rates from the 1980s to present. Future research should determine the area of the U.S. Great Plains that has seen changes in the dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer height and lifted condensation level and their crossings as a necessary condition for convective precipitation to occur and ascertain if ongoing changes in land management will lead to future changes in convective outcomes.

Abstract. Flash droughts tend to be disproportionately destructive because they intensify rapidly and are difficult to prepare for. We demonstrate that the 2017 US Northern Great Plains (NGP) flash drought was preceded by a breakdown of land–atmosphere coupling. Severe drought conditions in the NGP were first identified by drought monitors in late May 2017 and rapidly progressed to exceptional drought in July. The likelihood of convective precipitation in May 2017 in northeastern Montana, however, resembled that of a typical August when rain is unlikely. Based on the lower tropospheric humidity index (HIlow), convective rain was suppressed by the atmosphere on nearly 50 % of days during March in NE Montana and central North Dakota, compared to 30 % during a normal year. Micrometeorological variables, including potential evapotranspiration (ETp), were neither anomalously high nor low before the onset of drought. Incorporating convective likelihood to drought forecasts would have noted that convective precipitation in the NGP was anomalously unlikely during the early growing season of 2017. It may therefore be useful to do so in regions that rely on convective precipitation.

We examined climate trends in the northern North American Great Plains (NNAGP) from 1970 to 2015, a period that aligns with widespread land-use changes in this globally important agricultural region. Trends were calculated from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and other climate datasets using a linear regression model that accounts for temporal autocorrelation. The NNAGP warmed on an annual basis, with the largest change occurring in winter (DJF) at 0.4°C decade−1. January in particular warmed at nearly 0.9°C decade−1. The NNAGP cooled by −0.18°C decade−1 during May and June, nearly the opposite of global warming trends during the study period. The atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD), which can limit crop growth, decreased in excess of −0.4 hPa decade−1 during climatological summer in the southeastern part of the study domain. Precipitation P increased in the eastern portion of the NNAGP during all seasons except fall and increased during May and June in excess of 8 mm decade−1. Climate trends in the NNAGP largely followed global trends except during the early warm season (May and June) during which 2-m air temperature Tair became cooler, VPD lower, and P greater across large parts of the study region. These changes are consistent with observed agricultural intensification during the study period, namely the reduction of summer fallow and expansion of agricultural land use. Global climate model simulations indicate that observed Tair trends cannot be explained by natural climate variability. However, further climate attribution experiments are necessary to understand if observed changes are caused by increased agricultural intensity or other factors.