Humid, Warm and Treed Ecosystems Show Longer Time-Lag of Vegetation Response to Climate

Abstract

Climate-vegetation interaction assessments often focus on vegetation response to concurrent climatic perturbations, seldom on the time-lag effect of climate. Here we employ global satellite observations, climate data records and CO₂ flux measurements to calculate the time-lag of vegetation response to climate. We analyze the time-lags of various climate variables under distinct environmental conditions to gain insight into how the long-term climatic regimes and tree cover influence the time-lag effects. Our findings reveal that terrestrial ecosystems characterized by arid and cold climates show more concurrent climate-vegetation interactions than other ecosystems. Whereas areas with higher tree cover and humid ecosystems with both high mean annual temperature and precipitation show substantial time-lag response of vegetation to climate by up to 6 months. Since the global climate-vegetation interaction is dominated by time-lag effects, incorporating these effects is paramount to improve our understanding of vegetation dynamics under a changing climate.