Abstract
Persistent and above-average warming has advanced the start of spring permafrost thawing, intensifying climate warming through carbon feedbacks. However, the extent to which variations in spring permafrost thawing contribute to greening trends in permafrost-affected areas (i.e., increases in vegetation greenness) over time remains unclear, limiting our understanding of the ecological consequences of permafrost degradation. Analyzing 40-year freeze/thaw data and multiple satellite-derived greenness indicators, we identify widespread increases in the sensitivity of spring greenness to spring permafrost thawing based on moving-window analyses, indicating that advances in spring permafrost thawing have played a progressively stronger role in promoting spring greening, particularly in boreal forests and tundra regions underlain by continuous permafrost. In addition to the region-specific climate and permafrost conditions, we uncover biogeophysical pathways accounting for the increase in sensitivity of spring greenness to spring permafrost thawing, including reduced albedo, earlier vegetation phenology, and enhanced soil moisture infiltration. Notably, state-of-the-art Dynamic Global Vegetation Models consistently underestimate both the magnitude and variability of sensitivity of spring greenness to spring permafrost thawing. These findings highlight the temporal changes in vegetation responses to freeze-thaw dynamics, necessitating improved model projections concurrent with climate change.
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Tundra vegetation change and impacts on permafrost
Vegetation greening amplifies shallow soil temperature warming on the Tibetan Plateau
Warming-independent shortened snow cover duration enhances vegetation greening across northern permafrost region
Data availability
All data used in this study are freely available from public repositories. Freeze-thaw state data are provided by FT-ESDR (https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0477/versions/5). Satellite-based greenness indicators include kNDVI (https://www.environment.snu.ac.kr/data/longterm-vi), LCSPP v3.2 (https://zenodo.org/records/14568024), BESS v2.0 GPP (https://www.environment.snu.ac.kr/bessv2), GOSIF, CSIF, and VODCA v2 (https://researchdata.tuwien.at/records/t74ty-tcx62). Meteorological data are available from TerraClimate (https://www.climatologylab.org/). Global monthly CO2 records are available from NOAA. ERA5-Land datasets are available from Google Earth Engine and Copernicus Climate Data Store (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/). In situ surface temperature records are available from GTN-P (https://gtnp.arcticportal.org/). Active layer thickness data are provided by ESA. Soil organic carbon and nitrogen data are available from SoilGrids (https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids). Maximum root depth is available from EartH2Observe (http://www.earth2observe.eu/). Global canopy height data are available from ETH Global Canopy Height 2020 (https://code.earthengine.google.com/126c172d63e7ce780596c8d26f06d384). Land cover datasets include TEOW biomes (https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/terrestrial-ecoregions-of-the-world), MODIS MCD12C1 IGBP (https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/), MOSEV dNBR (https://zenodo.org/records/4265209), and permafrost type data from NSIDC. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
All data analyses were performed using R v.4.3.1. The codes used in this study are available at Zenodo [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17543943]95.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42125101, W2412014). J.W. was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42571037) and “Kezhen and Bingwei” Young Scientist Program of IGSNRR. C.M.Z. was funded by SNF Ambizione grant PZ00P3_193646. J.P. was funded by the TED2021-132627B-I00 grant funded by the Spanish MCIN, AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR, the Fundación Ramón Areces project CIVP20A6621 and the Catalan government grants SGR221-1333 and AGAUR2023 CLIMA 00118. We also appreciate the funding from the Science and Technology Program of Guangdong (No. 2024B1212070012).
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C.W. designed the research. H.H. and J.W. wrote the first draft of the manuscript and performed the analyses. C.M.Z. and J.P. discussed the research design, interpretation, and manuscript revision. Y.R. provided methodological support. All authors assessed the analyses and contributed to improving the manuscript.
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Hua, H., Wang, J., Zohner, C.M. et al. Accelerated land surface greening caused by earlier permafrost thawing.
Nat Commun (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67644-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67644-1
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