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Climatic Warming Increases Spatial Synchrony in Spring Vegetation Phenology Across the Northern Hemisphere
Author(s) -
Liu Qiang,
Piao Shilong,
Fu Yongshuo H.,
Gao Mengdi,
Peñuelas Josep,
Janssens Ivan A.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2018gl081370
Subject(s) - phenology , northern hemisphere , latitude , environmental science , growing season , climatology , spring (device) , climate change , ecosystem , global warming , vegetation (pathology) , atmospheric sciences , physical geography , ecology , geography , geology , biology , mechanical engineering , medicine , geodesy , pathology , engineering
Climatic warming has advanced spring phenology across the Northern Hemisphere, but the spatial variability in temperature sensitivity of spring phenology is substantial. Whether spring phenology will continue to advance uniformly at latitudes has not yet been investigated. We used Bayesian model averaging and four spring phenology models, and demonstrated that the start of vegetation growing season across the Northern Hemisphere will become substantially more synchronous (up to 11.3%) under future climatic warming conditions. Larger start of growing season advances are expected at higher than lower latitudes (3.7–10.9 days earlier) due to both larger rate in spring warming at higher latitudes and larger decreases in the temperature sensitivity of start of growing season at low latitudes. The consequent impacts on the northern ecosystems due to this increased synchrony may be considerable and thus worth investigating.