Journal Article

Forest productivity in southwestern Europe controlled by coupled North Atlantic and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillations

Herrero Méndez, Asier, Universidad de Alcalá. Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Madrigal González, Jaime, Unidad Docente Ecología, Stoffel, Markus, Lucas Borja, Manuel E, Zavala Gironés, Miguel Ángel de, Ruiz Benito, Paloma, Sancho García, C, Ballesteros Cánovas, Juan Antonio

2017

Overview

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) depicts annual and decadal oscillatory modes of variability responsible for dry spells over the European continent. The NAO therefore holds a great potential to evaluate the role, as carbon sinks, of water-limited forests under climate change. However, uncertainties related to inconsistent responses of long-term forest productivity to NAO have so far hampered firm conclusions on its impacts. We hypothesize that, in part, such inconsistencies might have their origin in periodical sea surface temperature anomalies in the Atlantic Ocean (i.e., Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, AMO). Here we show strong empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis using 120 years of periodical inventory data from Iberian pine forests. Our results point to AMO + NAO + and AMO − NAO − phases as being critical for forest productivity, likely due to decreased winter water balance and abnormally low winter temperatures, respectively. Our findings could be essential for the evaluation of ecosystem functioning vulnerabilities associated with increased climatic anomalies under unprecedented warming conditions in the Mediterranean. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) drives biological responses in terrestrial ecosystems through oscillatory modes of climatic variability. Here, the authors show how landscape scale productivity responses to NAO are contingent upon the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in southwestern Europe.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 704/158/2445 / 704/158/2454 / Anomalies / Carbon sinks / Climate change / Coniferous forests / Ecological function / Forest productivity / Forests / Humanities and Social Sciences / Low temperature / multidisciplinary / North Atlantic Oscillation / Oscillations / Productivity / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Sea surface temperature / Water balance / Winter
• ISBN: 0000025911