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The ‘hot spot-hot moment’ concept is a long-standing and popular framework often invoked to explain spatially or temporally variable rates of biogeochemical cycling. However, this concept has been rarely extended to ecosystem fluxes such as gross primary productivity (GPP), in part due to the lack of a quantitative definition of hot moments that can be applied to large flux datasets. Here, we develop a general statistical framework for quantifying hot moments in GPP and identify their spatial patterns and climatic drivers. Using 308 site-years of eddy covariance data from the FLUXNET2015 dataset spanning 32 U.S. sites, we found hot moments in GPP to comprise a disproportionate percentage of annual carbon (C) uptake relative to the frequency of their occurrence. For example, at five sites over 12% of annual C uptake occurred during the ∼2% most extreme half-hourly or hourly observations of GPP. Hot moments were most quantitatively important for the C cycle in short-stature, arid ecosystem such as grasslands, woody savannas, and open shrublands, where these positive anomalies in GPP were caused by increases in moisture availability. In contrast, hot moments were less important for annual C uptake in more mesic ecosystems, where their occurrence was largely determined by high temperature and light availability. Our results point to a need to consider how short-term spikes in environmental conditions exert an outsized influence on annual GPP, and how future shifts in these conditions could impact the terrestrial C cycle.

environmental research letters

Hot moments in ecosystem fluxes: High GPP anomalies exert outsized influence on the carbon cycle and are differentially driven by moisture availability across biomes