Identification

Title

How important is vegetation phenology for European climate and heat waves?

Abstract

It has been hypothesized that vegetation phenology may play an important role for the midlatitude climate. This study investigates the impact of interannual and intraseasonal variations in phenology on European climate using regional climate model simulations. In addition, it assesses the relative importance of interannual variations in vegetation phenology and soil moisture on European summer climate. It is found that drastic phenological changes have a smaller effect on mean summer and spring climate than extreme changes in soil moisture (roughly ¼ of the temperature anomaly induced by soil moisture changes). However, the impact of phenological anomalies during heat waves is found to be more important. Generally, late and weak greening has amplifying effects and early and strong greening has dampening effects on heat waves; however, regional variations are found. The experiments suggest that in the extreme hot 2003 (western and central Europe) and 2007 (southeastern Europe) summers the decrease in leaf area index amplified the heat wave peaks by about 0.5°C for daily maximum temperatures (about half of the effect induced by soil moisture deficit). In contrast to earlier hypotheses, no anomalous early greening in spring 2003 is seen in the phenological dataset employed here. Hence, the results indicate that vegetation feedbacks amplified the 2003 heat wave but were not responsible for its initiation. In conclusion, the results suggest that phenology has a limited effect on European mean summer climate, but its impact can be as important as that induced by soil moisture anomalies in the context of specific extreme events.

Resource type

document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7jd4xqb

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Dataset language

eng

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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reference date

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publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2013-12-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2013 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

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pointOfContact

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