On July 10, Dr. Sujong Jeong, an associate professor in the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology, published a paper entitled “Reduced North American terrestrial primary productivity linked to anomalous Arctic warming” in Nature Geoscience as a corresponding author.  The paper provides a comprehensive analysis about the impact of arctic warming on terrestrial productivity in the non-arctic region over the North America.

The researchers find that positive spring temperature anomalies in the Arctic have led to negative anomalies in gross primary productivity over most of North America during last three decades, which amount to a net productivity decline of 0.31 PgCyr-1 across the continent. This decline is mainly explained by two factors: severe cold conditions in northern North America and lower precipitation in the South Central United States. Overall, this study demonstrates for the first time an apparent linkage between Arctic temperature variations and agricultural productivity in mid-latitudes. The results from this study could be used to forecast agricultural productivity and reduce its uncertainty.

After the paper was published, it was immediately reported by numerous media outlets, including Washington Post, Google, and Daily Mail.

Atmospheric teleconnections linked to Arctic warming

Prof. Su-Jong Jeong said, “This paper is very important to me personally. When I first joined SUSTech, I did not have any staff or students. Thus I invited a visiting student from POSTECH in South Korea. The visiting student at that time became the first author in this paper. In the future, I hope to establish a great research program at SUSTech with my students here.”

Prof. Jeong is also a co-author on a recent paper entitled “Weakening temperature control on the interannual variations of spring carbon uptake across northern lands” published by Nature Climate Change. The researchers in this paper show a weakening of relationships between warming and terrestrial carbon uptake enhancement over high latitudes. Reduced chilling during dormancy and emerging light limitation are possible mechanisms that may have contributed to the loss of net primary productivity in response to spring temperature change.

Frequency distributions of the partial correlation coefficient
between spring carbon uptake and temperature

Link to the Nature Geoscience paper:

https://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2986.html

Like to the Nature Climate Change paper:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n5/full/nclimate3277.html