GC083-0013
Siberia heatwave: dynamics and impact on vegetation

Monday, 14 December 2020
Poster
Lucas Gloege, Columbia University of New York, Earth and Environmental Engineering, New York, NY, United States, Kai Kornhuber, Columbia University, Earth Institute/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York, United States, Indrani Pal, NOAA-Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology (CREST), Civil Engineering, New York, NY, United States, Sha Zhou, Columbia University, Earth and Environmental Engineering Department, New York, NY, United States and Pierre Gentine, Columbia University, Earth and Environmental Engineering, New York, NY, United States
Abstract:
A heatwave from January to June 2020 caused the temperature to reach up to 38oC in Siberia. This led to a string of wildfires, some North of the Arctic circle, which released an estimated 56 megatonnes of CO2 in June 2020. While a rapid attribution study described human caused climate change as a major driving factor for this heatwave, the atmospheric dynamical mechanism setting up this long-term heatwave and impact of wildfires on terrestrial vegetation is yet to be described and quantified. In this study we use ERA5 reanalysis output and MODIS satellite retrievals to describe the atmospheric dynamics associated with this recent heatwave and its effects on regional vegetation and carbon uptake. Preliminary results reveal a ridge in the meridional winds coinciding with a positive temperature anomaly over Siberia. This ridge is associated with wavenumber-5 with high amplitude and near-zero phase speed, correlated with a strong anomaly in vegetation cover and related impact on fires. Taken together, this evidence suggests that large scale dynamics played an important role maintaining the heatwave in addition to global warming. With the Arctic warming twice as fast as the global average, this event stands to have global consequences and foreshadow the future of the Arctic as the climate changes.
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