How ecosystem–atmosphere exchange of reactive hydrocarbons, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), responds to climate change may provide important feedbacks on the regional climate. We combined direct measurements with model predictions of ecosystem-scale fluxes of isoprene—the most emitted BVOC worldwide—from two contrasting tundra sites, to characterize their temperature response. The continuous time series provide clear evidence that tundra vegetation will substantially boost its isoprene emissions in response to rising temperatures and allow for improvement of models that currently underestimate the temperature dependence of high-latitude isoprene emissions. These insights have implications for the atmosphere in a high-latitude region where climate is changing more than anywhere else on our planet.
From: Seco, R., Holst, T., Davie-Martin, C. L., Simin, T., Guenther, A., Pirk, N., Rinne, J., and Rinnan, R. (2022). Strong isoprene emission response to temperature in tundra vegetation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(38):e2118014119. DOI:10.1073/pnas.2118014119