Abstract
Global climate change is influencing the seasonal cycle amplitude of atmospheric CO2 (SCA), with the strongest increases at northern high latitudes (NHL; >45° N). In this Review, we explore the changes and underlying mechanisms influencing the NHL SCA, focusing on Arctic and boreal terrestrial ecosystems. Latitudinal gradients in the SCA are largely governed by seasonality in temperature and primary production, and their influence on ecosystem carbon dynamics. In the NHL, the SCA has increased by 50% since the 1960s, mostly due to enhanced seasonality in net carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange in NHL terrestrial ecosystems. Temperature most strongly influences this trend, owing to warming impacts on growing season length and plant productivity; CO2 fertilization effects have a secondary role. Eurasian boreal ecosystems exert the strongest influence on the SCA, and spring and summer are the most influential seasons. Enhanced ecosystem respiration during the non-growing season exhibits most uncertainty in the SCA response to global and landscape drivers. Observed changes in the seasonal amplitude are projected to continue. Key priorities include extending carbon flux and ecosystem observation networks, particularly in tundra ecosystems, and including drivers such as vegetation cover and permafrost in process models to better simulate seasonal dynamics of net CO2 exchange in the NHL.
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Data availability
All synthesized data are publicly available. The in situ carbon dioxide (CO2) data are from the archive of the Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)177, and the Copernicus Atmospheric Modelling Service (CAMS) global inversion-optimized CO2 concentration data are from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service178. Code is available from the corresponding authors upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by CAS Youth Interdisciplinary Team, CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (YSBR-037), and Major Program of the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAEMP202201). B.M.R., J.S.K., J.D. and L.H. were supported by the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment and Carbon Cycle Science programs (NNX17AE13G, 80NSSC22K1238, 80NSSC19M0105). B.M.R., S.M.N., A.-M.V. and J.D.W. were also supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grant no. 8414), and funding catalysed through the Audacious Project (Permafrost Pathways). G.K.-A. acknowledges funding from the RUBISCO Science Focus Area, which is funded by the Department of Energy Regional and Global Model and Analysis program. M.H. acknowledges funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant program (RGPIN-02565-21). J.A.W. and J.E.K. thank the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment program (80NSSC23K0140). A.P.B. was supported by the NASA ResCom award (20-CARBON20-0096). W.W. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42371075). E.A.S. received support from: NSF ARCSS RNA grant no. 1931333, and the Minderoo Foundation. S.J.G. and L.T.B. were supported by the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (80NSSC22K1247). W.B. was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – BU 3955/2-1. J.E.K received support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. DGE-1839285. A.L.B. was funded by the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) grants NNX17AE44G and 80NSSC19M01, and the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) contract RC18-1183. A portion of this research was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
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B.M.R. and Z.L. conceptualized the work. Z.L. led the work. Z.L., B.M.R., G.K.-A., Y.Z. and M.H. organized the work and contributed analysis. Z.L., B.M.R., G.K.-A., M.H., A.P.B., Y.Z. and J.S.K. wrote the original manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion and writing of this manuscript.
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Liu, Z., Rogers, B.M., Keppel-Aleks, G. et al. Seasonal CO2 amplitude in northern high latitudes. Nat Rev Earth Environ 5, 802–817 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00600-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00600-7
