Respiratory loss during late-growing season determines the net carbon dioxide sink in northern permafrost regions
We focused on the Northern High Latitudes (NHL, latitude > 50°N, excluding Greenland) due to their importance for carbon (CO2-C, the same hereafter)-climate feedbacks in the Earth system. To minimize the potential human influence on the CO2 cycle, we excluded areas under agricultural management (croplands, cropland/natural vegetation mosaic, and urban types), and considered only pixels of natural vegetation defined from the MODIS MCD12Q1 (v006) based IGBP land cover classification. Our main focus was the NHL permafrost region because permafrost plays a critical role in the ecology, environment, and society in the NHL. Permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, is defined as ground (soil, sediment, or rock) that remains at or below 0 °C for at least two consecutive years. The occurrence of permafrost is primarily controlled by temperature and has a strong effect on hydrology, soils, and vegetation composition and structure. Based on the categorical permafrost map from the International Permafrost Association58, the permafrost region (excluding permanent snow/ice and barren land), including sporadic (10–50%), discontinuous (50–90%), and continuous ( >90%) permafrost, encompasses about 15.7 × 106 km2, accounts for 57% of the NHL study dominion, and is dominated by tundra (shrubland and grass) and deciduous needleleaf (i.e., larch) forest that is regionally abundant in Siberia. The NHL non-permafrost region covers about 11.9 × 106 km2 and is dominated by mixed and evergreen needleleaf boreal forests (Fig. S1).Atmospheric CO2 inversions (ACIs)ACIs provide regionally-integrated estimates of surface-to-atmosphere net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEEACI) fluxes by utilizing atmospheric CO2 concentration measurements and atmospheric transport models59. ACIs differ from each other mainly in their underlying atmospheric observations, transport models, spatial and temporal flux resolutions, land surface models used to predict prior fluxes, observation uncertainty and prior error assignment, and inversion methods. We used an ensemble mean of six different ACI products, each providing monthly gridded NEEACI at 1-degree spatial resolution, including Carbon‐Tracker 2019B (2000-2019, CT2019)60, Carbon‐Tracker Europe 2020 (2000–2019, CTE2020)61, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (1979–2019, CAMS)62, Jena CarboScope (versions s76_v4.2 1976–2017, and s85_v4.2 1985-2017)63,64, and JAMSTEC (1996–2017)65. The monthly gridded ensemble mean NEEACI at 1-degree spatial resolution was calculated using the available ACIs from 1980-2017. Monthly ACI ensemble mean NEEACI data were summed to seasonal and annual values, and used to calculate the spatial and temporal trends of net CO2 uptake, and to investigate its relationship to climate and environmental controls.Productivity datasetDirect observations of vegetation productivity do not exist at a circumpolar scale. We therefore used two long-term gridded satellite-based estimates of vegetation productivity, including gross primary production (GPP) derived using a light use efficiency (LUE) approach (LUE GPP, 1982–1985)21,66 and satellite observations of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS NDVI, 1982–1985)67. LUE GPP (monthly, 0.5° spatial resolution, 1982–2015) is calculated from satellite observations of NDVI from the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR; 1982 to 2015) combined with meteorological data, using the MOD17 LUE approach. LUE GPP has been extensively validated with a global array of eddy-flux tower sites68,69,70 and tends to provide better estimates in ecosystems with greater seasonal variability at high latitudes. Following66,71, we used the ensemble mean of GPP estimates from three of the most commonly used meteorological data sets: National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis; NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2); and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). GIMMS NDVI (bimonthly, 1/12 spatial resolution, 1982–2015) provides the longest satellite observations of vegetation “greenness”, and is widely used in studies of phenology, productivity, biomass, and disturbance monitoring as it has proven to be an effective surrogate of vegetation photosynthetic activity72.The gridded GPP data were resampled to 1-degree resolution at monthly time scales, to be consistent with NEEACI, and used to test (H1) whether greater temperature sensitivity of vegetation productivity explains the different trends in net CO2 uptake across the NHL. LUE GPP was also used to calculate monthly total ecosystem respiration (TER) as the difference between GPP and NEEACI (i.e., TERresidual = GPP– NEEACI) from 1982-2015, as global observations of respiration do not exist. The NEEACI, GPP and TERresidual were used as observation-constrained top-down CO2 fluxes to investigate mechanisms underlying the seasonal CO2 dynamics in the structural equation modeling and additional decision tree-based analysis.Eddy Covariance (EC) measurements of bottom-up CO2 fluxesA total of 48 sites with at least three years of data representing the major NHL ecosystems were obtained from the FLUXNET2015 database (Table S1 and Fig. S1). EC measurements provide direct observations of net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) and estimate the GPP and TER flux components of NEE using other climate variables. Daily GPP and TER were estimated as the mean value from both the nighttime partitioning method73 and the light response curve method74. More details on the flux partitioning and gap-filling methods used are provided by75. Daily fluxes were summed into seasonal and annual values and used to compare with trends from ACIs (Fig. S7), to estimate the climate and environmental controls on the CO2 cycle in the pathway analysis (Fig. 5), and to calculate the net CO2 uptake sensitivity to spring temperature (Fig. S14).Ensemble of dynamic global vegetation models (TRENDY simulations)The TRENDY intercomparison project compiles simulations from state-of-the-art dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) to evaluate terrestrial energy, water, and net CO2 exchanges76. The DGVMs provide a bottom-up approach to evaluate terrestrial CO2 fluxes (e.g., net biome production [NBP]) and allow deeper insight into the mechanisms driving changes in carbon stocks and fluxes. We used monthly NBP, GPP, and TER (autotrophic + heterotrophic respiration; Ra + Rh) from ten TRENDY v7 DGVMs76, including CABLE-POP, CLM5.0, OCN, ORCHIDEE, ORCHIDEE-CNP, VISIT, DLEM, LPJ, LPJ-GUESS, and LPX. We analyzed the “S3” simulations that include time-varying atmospheric CO2 concentrations, climate, and land use. All simulations were based on climate forcing from the CRU-NCEPv4 climate variables at 6-hour resolution. CO2 flux outputs were summarized monthly at 1-degree spatial resolution from 1980 to 2017. Monthly ensemble mean NBP, GPP, and TER were summed to seasonal and annual values, and then used to compare with observation-constrained ACI top-down CO2 fluxes (Figs. 4 and 5).Satellite data-driven carbon flux estimates (SMAP L4C)We also used a much finer spatio-temporal simulation of carbon fluxes from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission Level 4 Carbon product (L4C) to quantify the temperature and moisture sensitivity of NHL CO2 exchange77. The SMAP L4C provides global operational daily estimates of NEE and component CO2 fluxes for GPP and TER at 9 km resolution since 2015; whereas, an offline version of the L4C model provides a similar Nature Run (NR) carbon flux record over a longer period (2000-present), but without the influence of SMAP observational inputs. The L4C model has been calibrated against FLUXNET tower CO2 flux measurements and shows favorable performance and accuracy in high latitude regions4,77. In this analysis, daily gridded CO2 fluxes at 9-km resolution from the L4C NR record were summed to seasonal and annual values, and used to calculate the sensitivity of net C uptake in response to spring temperature (Fig. S14).CO2 fluxes in this analysis are defined with respect to the biosphere so that a positive value indicates the biosphere is a net sink of CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere. The different data products described above use different terminology (e.g., NEE, NBP) with slightly different meanings; however, they all provide estimates of net land-atmosphere CO2 exchange78.Climate, tree cover, permafrost, and soil moisture dataMonthly gridded air temperatures at 0.5-degree spatial resolution from 1980 to 2017 were obtained from the Climate Research Unit (CRU TS v4.02) at the University of East Anglia79. Air temperature was summarized at seasonal and annual scales to calculate temperature sensitivities of net CO2 uptake and to investigate the mechanism underlying the seasonal CO2 dynamics.Percent tree cover (%TC) at 0.05-degree spatial resolution was averaged over a 35-year (1982-2016) period using annual %TC layers derived from the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) (Fig. 1a)42. %TC was binned using 5% TC intervals to assess its relation to net CO2 uptake, or aggregated at a regional scale (e.g., TC > 50% or TC 90%), discontinuous permafrost (DisconP, 10% < P 90%), discontinuous (DisconP, 10% < P 0.05 indicate a good fitting model), Bentler’s comparative fit index (CFI, where CFI ≈ 1 indicates a good fitting model), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; where RMSEA ≤ 0.05 and p > 0.1 indicate a good fitting model). The standardized regression coefficient can be interpreted as the relative influences of exogenous (independent) variables. The R2 indicates the total variation in an endogenous (dependent) variable explained by all exogenous (independent) variables.Direct and legacy effects of temperature on seasonal net CO2 uptakeBecause landscape thawing and snow conditions regulate the onset of vegetation growth and influence the seasonal and annual CO2 cycles in the NHL24,84, we also analyzed the legacy effects of spring (May–Jun) temperature on seasonal net CO2 uptake. We regressed seasonal and annual net CO2 uptake from the site-level EC observations, regional-level ACI ensemble, and the TRENDY NBP ensemble against spring (May-June) air temperature. For EC observations, net CO2 uptake (i.e., NEE) and air temperature were summarized from site-level measurements. For the ACIs and TRENDY ensemble, net CO2 uptake (i.e., NEEACI and NBP) was summarized as regional means from the ACIs and TRENDY ensemble outputs, and air temperature was summarized as regional means from CRU temperature. The slope of the regression line was interpreted as the spring temperature sensitivity of the CO2 cycle. Simple linear regression was used here mainly due to the strong influence of spring temperature on the seasonal and annual CO2 cycle in NHL ecosystems30. Temperature sensitivity (γ: g C m−2 day−1 K−1) is the change in net CO2 flux (g C m−2 day−1) in response to a 1-degree temperature change. The sensitivity of net CO2 uptake to warm spring anomalies was calculated for different seasons (EGS, LGS, and annual) and regions (i.e., permafrost and non-permafrost), and the T-test was used to test for the difference in γ among different regions, seasons, and datasets. Similarly, direct effects of temperature on net CO2 uptake were calculated using the same season data (Fig. S14).Observationally-constrained estimates (EC and ACIs) showed that the sensitivity of net CO2 uptake in the EGS to spring temperature is positive (γ > 0) and not statistically different (p > 0.05) between permafrost and non-permafrost regions (({gamma }_{{ACI}}^{{np}})=0.125 ± 0.020 gC m−2 d−1 K−1; ({gamma }_{{EC}}^{{np}}) = 0.052 ± 0.013 gC m−2 d−1 K−1). In contrast, the sensitivity of net CO2 uptake in LGS to spring temperature is negative (γ More