Synchronous dynamics of spectral greening trends and regional climate variability across Europe

Abstract

Europe witnessed a strong increase in climate variability and extremes over the past decades that caused degradation of ecological and societal resilience. Cascading feedbacks like the 2003 and 2010 heat waves were considered environmental response to anthropogenically reinforced climate anomalies. Land-use intensification, landcover change, and forest degradation further increased the pressure on the ecosystem’s functionalities. Conversely, recent satellite observations emphasized positive vegetation and landcover reflectance trends as a response to rising atmospheric CO₂ input and global warming, particularly in the northern latitudes. However, these global trends obfuscate the intensified regional divergence of climate variability and extremes and risk underestimating future climate induced feedbacks. Consequently, long-term climate trends and variability must be analysed together with annual and interannual anomalies to understand regional feedback mechanisms and surface cover changes. This article presents long-term NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) monthly time series analyses compared to multicomponent environmental background variability to highlight European-scale greening trends over the period 2001–2020. Significant warming and persistent hot droughts affect regional vegetation trends in central Europe compared to prolonged phenological phases and reduced snow-cover in north-eastern Europe.