Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership

NEESPI current status and its objectives within northwestern Eurasia

http://neespi.org

Recognition

Pavel Groisman, NEESPI Project Scientist

UCAR at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center,

Asheville, North Carolina, USA

Rationale for NEESPI

1. Strong interactions in the system terrestrial ecosystem - atmosphere hydrosphere -cryosphere - human society and feedbacks to global energy, water, and carbon cycles in the region

2. Strong climatic and environmental changes….

The

NEESPI

Study

Area

NEESPI Study Area includes: Former Soviet

Union, Northern China, Mongolia,

Fennoscandia, & Eastern Europe

NEESPI is an interdisciplinary

program of internationally-

supported Earth systems and

science research that addresses

large-scale and long-term

manifestations of climate and

environmental change.

NEESPI duration ~ 10 years (started in 2004)

The NEESPI Science Plan (available on

http://neespi.org) has elements that address

concerns of WCRP, IGBP, IHDP, and

DIVERSITAS Programs

NEESPI and the actions to develop

its Science Plan were initially

promoted by NASA and Russian

Academy of Sciences (2003-2004).

RAS

Since early 2005, the NEESPI community

has worked to make NEESPI inter-agency

(in the U.S.) and international.

NEESPI AND ITS PAST

• How do Northern Eurasia’s terrestrial ecosystems dynamics interact with and alter the biosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, and hydrosphere of the Earth?

This question can be reformulated in a pragmatic way as:

• How do we develop our predictive capability of terrestrial ecosystems dynamics over Northern Eurasia for the 21st century to support global projections as well as informed decision making and numerous practical applications in the region?

Our concern is that the changes in this region have the potential to affect the entire Earth System and may already be doing so.

The overarching NEESPI science question:

NEESPI Science plan major focuses• Focus on transient zones that are most vulnerable in

the future changes– Coastal zone– Tundra-forest– Forest-steppe– Steppe-desert– Mountains

• and on “Boundaries”• Focus on feedbacks that make the projection of the

future changes uncertain– Biogeochemical feedbacks– Biogeophysical feedbacks– Human activity

Major concern:

Ecosystems and climate interactions

in the region are very strong.

But, various biogeochemical and

biogeophysical feedbacks are poorly

understood and are difficult to

project.

• In a warmer climate, there will be an intensification of bioproductivity, B+B, and thus a sequestration of some fraction of the anthropogenic CO2 will occur.

• For example, boreal forest located in the regions of greatest warming and a general surface heat deficit is a primary candidate for this negative feedback. But, what if ...

Example: Classical biogeochemical

feedback

… the area of the boreal forests changes?

... the rate of release of methane and CO2

from soil increase?

The above may generate a potential

runaway scenario of a strong

positive biogeochemical feedback.

• Plus, there are several other “if”…

But, what if…

“Uncertainty” is the answer…

Example of hydrology-vegetation feedback.

Net Ecosystem Exchange [positive CO2 flux stands for

source to the atmosphere]. The sign of annual NEE

depends upon weather conditions

Date

Ac

cu

mu

late

d C

O2 f

lux

(N

EE

,mo

l m

-2)

-12

-8

-4

0

4

31.0

3

10.0

4

20.0

4

30.0

4

10.0

5

20.0

5

30.0

5

9.0

6

19.0

6

29.0

6

9.0

7

19.0

7

29.0

7

8.0

8

18.0

8

28.0

8

7.0

9

17.0

9

27.0

9

7.1

0

17.1

0

27.1

0

Wet spruce forest , CFR, Tv er region

2000

2001

1999

2002

CO 2-source

CO 2-sink

1998

C

Dry years

From

the

Archive

of the

Euro-

Siberian

Carbon-

flux

Project.

to have in ~10 years• A suite of process –oriented models for each major

terrestrial process in all its interactions • A suite of global and regional models that

seamlessly incorporate all regionally specific feedbacks associated with terrestrial processes

• An integrated observational knowledge data base for environmental studies

• To bring the Earth System research in the region to the level it deserves

NEESPI Deliverables:

Current NEESPI Statistics (April 2010):

More than 560 scientists from more than

200 institutions of 30 countries are working

on more than 130 individual funded

projects under the Initiative umbrella (with

annual budget ~$15M), several more

projects are in the process of joining

NEESPI. Four major sponsors of NEESPI

remain: the United States, Russia,

European Union, and Japan.

Additionally, NEESPI receives in kind assistance from EU,

US, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Ukrainian and

International Agencies and Institutions.

Example of in-kind assistance

To support a Summer Workshop-School in Fedorovskoe (Russia, July 2007) on Boreal Forest Environmental Studies, sponsors from– Japan (National Institute of Environmental Sciences),– China (Beijing Normal University), – Russia (Severtsov Institute for Ecology, Russian Foundation for

Basic Research), – Germany (Friedrich-Schiller-University),– USA (NASA, Maryland University), – The International Arctic Research Center, Fairbanks, Alaska,

and – private US and Russian companies

swiftly came together with a 6-digit sum of money.

Two modes of NEESPI expansion• Dedicated Calls (recent NASA and RAS and perspective in

the NIS, EU, and China)

• Freely joined projects

• Benefits of the NEESPI membership

– Improved links to collaborators in Northern Eurasia and to US and EU scientists working on similar problems

– Exchange of ideas, datasets, and knowledge with other team members working on similar problems

– Synergistic approach in working on complex problems

– Priority access to remote sensing and in situ data collected over Northern Eurasia

– Education: student exchange, doctoral and post-doc positions sharing among the Team Institutions

Last 15 months of NEESPI Meetings, Workshops, Sessions

1. 4-6 March 2009, St. Petersburg, Russia. Programmatic Workshop “Hydrological application of changes in land cover/use, water management and climate across Northern Eurasia”

2. 20-23 April, 2009, Vienna, Austria. Session at the EGU General Assembly

3. 24 April 2009, Sopron, Hungary. First Consultative Workshop of the Regional NEESPI Research Center for Non-boreal Southeast Europe

4. 14-15 July, 2009, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Regional NEESPI Workshop devoted to Siberia

5. 9-15 Sept., 2009, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Regional Event devoted to High Elevation Studies (summer school, and two workshops)

6. 16-17 December 2009, San-Francisco, USA. Session at the Annual Fall AGU Meeting

7. 2-9 May, 2010, Vienna, Austria. Session at the Annual EGU General Assembly

• 14-18 June, 2010, Miedzyzdroje, Poland: This conference6th BALTEX Science Conference

Future Meeting Plans• 5 -11 July, 2010, Tomsk, Russia:

ENVIROMIS Event• 25-28 August Tartu, Estonia :

Joint LCLUC, GOFC, & NEESPI Workshop• 8-10 Sept. 2010, Lanzhou, China:

3rd Int. Symp. on Arid Climate Change• 13-17 December 2010, San-Francisco:

NEESPI Session at the next AGU Meeting• Summer 2011, St. Petersburg, Russia:

School on Regional Climate Modeling

During the past 3 years, ~25 dedicated NEESPI Workshops

and 6 NEESPI Open Science Sessions at the International

Meetings were convened and more than 350 papers and books

were published (the total number of publications exceeds 500).

NEESPI Outreach, http://neespi.org

In April 2007: 1st Special NEESPI issue (13 papers) in Global and Planetary

Change

In December 2007: 2nd NEESPI Special issue in Environmental Research

Letters (15 papers)

In April 2009: Book "Regional Aspects of Climate-Terrestrial-Hydrologic

Interactions in Non-boreal Eastern Europe" Groisman and Ivanov (Eds.)

published by Springer Verlag.

In May 2009: An overview NEESPI paper in Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc.

In October 2009 through March 2010: the 3rd NEESPI Special issue in

Environmental Research Letters (34 papers)

Current situation:

- Two books are in press and scheduled for the first half of 2010.

Both of them are devoted to Eurasian Arctic (land and sea shelf)

- Book “Environmental Changes in Siberia: Regional Changes and

their Global Consequences” is in preparation

First phase foci of NEESPI were monitoring and analyses. After the NEESPI Workshop in August 2007 at the Aspen Global Change Institute, a new course was

accepted towards strengthening of the NEESPI research focus on projections... i.e., focus on modeling…

Efforts are made

to blend modern

RCMs with

vegetation,

carbon flux,

permafrost,

hydrological,

and dust

production

models within a

North Eurasia

modeling suite

and link it to the

MIT Earth

System model.

Domain of the VMGO

RCM with 25 km spatial

resolution, Shkolnik 2009.

Zhuang 2009

Wood et al. 2009

Shuman et al. 2009

Tchebakova 2009

Sokolov 2009

Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE THE NEESPI WEB SITE:

http://neespi.org

Side Note:

“NEESPI” is pronounced

approximately like the

Russian phrase for

“Don’t sleep “

Part 2. Ongoing climatic changes in Northern Eurasia: Why they force us

to be expedient in our research

and what are specific concerns of the NEESPI studies in the northwestern part

of its domain

Global Surface Air Temperature Anomalies, °C

Rates of increase of

annual temperature

for the “globe” (60S

to 90N) and

Northern Eurasia are

0.86 C/129 yr and

1.4 C/129 yr

respectively. (Lugina

et al 2007, updated). -3.5

-2.5

-1.5

-0.5

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tem

per

atu

re a

no

mal

ies,

K

Years

Globe Northern Eurasia, north of 40N

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

2009

dT/dt = 1.28°C/100yrs; R² = 0.43-2

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Annual surface air temperature anomalies area-averaged over the 60°N - 90°N latitudinal zone

Decrease in surface air temperature meridional gradients

over the Northern Hemisphere estimated as a difference of

tropical mean zonal temperature (zone 0- 30N) and polar

mean zonal temperature (zone 60N - 90N).

For Northern Eurasia climate, zonal heat and water

vapor transport are of critical importance.

Winter

Autumn - Winter

Archive of Lugina et al. 2007, updated

dT/dt = 1.7°C/100yrs; R² = 0.20-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

4

5

1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tem

pera

ture

an

om

alies,

°C

Winter

Northern Eurasia, north of 40°NTemperature anomalies for the past 129 years

1951-1975 reference period

Changes in

January surface

air temperature.

The Arctic

becomes warmer

by up to 40 C

but the latitudinal

belt south of

60N becomes

colder by up to

8C. Newson 1973;

Nature, 241, 39-40

One of the first UCMO GCM sensitivity experiments

with polar ice replaced by water at 0C

Autumn sea ice extent changes (%)

Source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

Terra-MODIS RGB, July-Sept 2008, 250 m resolution. Cloud free composite. (Trishchenko et al 2009). Please, note large areas of ice-free water in the Arctic during this three-months-long season.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Anomalies, Sept. (%)

Autumn sea ice extent changes (%)

Source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

Over Northern Canada and Alaska, negative trends in maximun snow depth were documented (Ross Brown, 2009, Personal Communication)

Number of days with deep snow cover on the ground ( > 20 cm). Linear trends for the 1951-2006 period; [days/10yr].

Bulygina et al. 2009.

Linear trend estimates , days/10yr (Groisman et al. 2003).

Changes in the days with winter thaw during the 1950-2000 period

(Groisman et al. 2009)

Changes in the days with winter thaw over Fennoscandia

-70

-60

-50

-40

-30

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

1945

1948

1951

1954

1957

1960

1963

1966

1969

1972

1975

1978

1981

1984

1987

1990

1993

1996

1999

2002

2005

2008

дни

Anomalies (days) of the spring dates of daily surface

air temperature transition through 0°С from the

mean long-term values in central Belarus

Elena V. Komarovskaya, 2009; Personal

communication

Two months earlier!!!

Dates of the spring onset over Russia

D - a spring date when mean daily temperature stably passes

5C (here it is area-averaged over the entire Russia)

Date when mean daily temperature stably passes -5C did not change.

Over the Baltic Sea Basin of Russia, the rate of change is twice as high.

Vorkuta Region (Oberman, 2007)

Slide is a courtecy of Prof.

V. Romanovsky

Annual top of the

permafrost temperatures

in the northeastern part of

European Russia

Significant changes in surface air temperature, Arctic sea ice extent, atmospheric circulation, maximum

snow depth and snow water equivalent, and even the state of

the remnants of permafrost lead to “unstable” cold season over

Northern Europe and, in particular, in the Baltic Sea Basin

Spring

Spring temperature changes over North Eurasia

Temperature anomalies (°C) from the mean for the 1951-1975 reference period. Archive of Lugina et al. 2007, updated

dT/dt 1.6°C/(100yr); R² = 0.30-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

4

5

1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eurasia north of 40°N

dT/dt = 1.7°C/(100yr) ; R² = 0.19-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

4

5

1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eurasia, north of 60°N

Snow cover duration over the

former USSR (dashed lines) and

Russia (solid lines) from satellite

(red and blue lines) and in situ

observations (black lines)

(Groisman et al. 2006).

April-May snow cover duration over the former

USSR and Russia

April snow cover extent anomalies over Eurasia

Snow cover extent from NOAA

satellites for 1966-2009. NOAA NCDC

2009: State of the Climate

Global Analysis April 2009. [ Avail. at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php

?report=global&year=2009&month=apr ]

Pan-Arctic Ocean Drainage

Runoff changes in the deltas of three major Siberian rivers. Observations and future projections

Lammers and Shiklomanov (2009)

Slide is a courtecy of

Dr. A. Shiklomanov

Summer

July total net irradiance

(solar net + thermal infrared net)

The 22 year average from the NASA/GEWEX Surface Radiation Budget project.

Courtesy of Paul Stackhouse Jr. and Colleen Mikovitz, NASA Langley Research Center

Archive of Lugina et al. 2007, updated

dT/dt = 0.65°C/129yrs; R² = 0.20

-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

4

5

1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tem

pera

ture

an

om

alies,

°C

Summer

Northern Eurasia, north of 40°NTemperature anomalies for the past 129 years;

1951-1975 reference period

More humid conditions (blue),

more dry conditions (red),

more agricultural droughts (circled),

more prolonged dry episodes (rectangled).

Changes in the surface water cycle over Northern Eurasia

that have been statistically significant in the 20th century

Groisman et al 2009 (Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc.)

DYNAMICS OF FIRES NUMBERS AND BURNED AREA (PROTECTED TERRITORY OF RUSSIA)

Korovin and Zukkert 2003, updated

Intense fire in a Pinus sylvestris forest, resulting in a likely conversion to steppe

• Left, no regeneration after several years; right, no regeneration after 20 years (Siberia)

Tchebakova et al. (2009)

Landscape after forest fires

• Thawing of ice-rich permafrost, triggered by forest fire in Central Yakutia, transforms boreal forest into steppe-like habitats (photo by Vladimir Romanovsky)

Why we have to be expedient in our research in Northern Eurasia?

The changes are already here and they have been large!

Changes of the northern boundaries of forest and steppe zones along the 39E (past 13x103 years) (Kozharinov

and Puzachenko 2005)

…and large changes are projected…

... were large in the past...

Water (0),Tundra (1), forest-tundra (2), darkleaf taiga (3) and lightleaf taiga

(4), forest-steppe (5), steppe (6), semidesert (7), and polar desert (8).

Biome distribution over n. Eurasia east of 60°E

in current (a) and 2090 (b) climates (Vygodskaya et al. 2007)

In addition to large climatic and environmental changes,

we are facing a non-linearity in environmental and climatic

changes in Northern Eurasia right now due to

– Dramatic retreat of the Arctic sea Ice that is causing

• rampaged coastal erosion (up to 10 m yr-1)

• release of carbon (both, methane and CO2) stored in the frozen shelf and coast (Shakhova et al. 2009), and

• additional source of heat and moisture in early winter

– Impact on the World Ocean thermohaline circulation due to changes in the fresh water inflow into the Arctic Ocean

– Feedbacks to the global carbon budget & climate due to• Permafrost thaw

• Wetlands transformation

• Land cover changes and

• Ecosystems shift

Example 2:

Land use dynamics in the

past 60 years in the Volga

River Basin show that 13

Mln Ha of agricultural land

(or ~20%) have been

replaced by forest (10 Mln)

and reservoirs (3 Mln)

[Golubev, Speranskaya &

Tsitsenko 2003]

… as well as by the changes

caused by human activity:

Example 1:

More than 90% of steppe

and forest-steppe zones in

Northern Eurasia is

currently cropland (orange

areas in the map)

[Rozenzweig et al. 2003]

Source: Shiklomanov (1976)

Update: Shiklomanov and Georgievsky (2003)

-30

-29

-28

-27

-26

-25

-24

1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

m b

elo

w W

orl

d O

ce

an

le

ve

l Real Natural

Example 3. Observed and “natural” changes in

the level of the largest in the world lake are

significant and of similar magnitudes

Caspian Sea Level changes

observed

2 m

Natural would be changes

E.g., …the Aral Sea …

1989 2003

… up to the extreme cases that

lead to ecological disasters

=> A synergetic approach to projections of the future changes is a core of the NEESPI

Thus, it looks like within Northern

Eurasia we have to study:

Human activity changes

Climate system changes

Greenhouse gases changes

Ecosystems’ changes

and

their interactions

Problem was not the large changes

themselves but understanding of their

causes and timely projections

Research foci in the northwestern part of the NEESPI domain

• Cold season: In the future

we may not see it as we

used to see

• Hydrological cycle

changes:

• Human impact on the Baltic Sea Environment

• Changes in extremes (see next slide)

Regions with disproportionate changes in heavy and very heavy precipitation during the past decades

compared to the change in the annual and/or seasonal precipitation

Easterling et al. 2000, substantially updated from Groisman et al. 2005, Zhai et al. 2005, Roy and Balling 2004, Aguilar et al. 2005, Brunetti et al. 2004, Cavazos 2008, and Zolina et al. 2010. Thresholds used to define “heavy” and “very heavy” precipitation vary by season and region.

+

++

Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE THE NEESPI WEB SITE:

http://neespi.org

Side Note:

“NEESPI” is pronounced

approximately like the

Russian phrase for

“Don’t sleep “