High temperature sensitivity of Arctic isoprene emissions explained by sedges

• Published in: Nature Communications
• Main Authors: Hui Wang, Allison M. Welch, Sanjeevi Nagalingam, Christopher Leong, Claudia I. Czimczik, Jing Tang, Roger Seco, Riikka Rinnan, Lejish Vettikkat, Siegfried Schobesberger, Thomas Holst, Shobhit Brijesh, Rebecca J. Sheesley, Kelley C. Barsanti, Alex B. Guenther
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Portfolio 2024
• Subjects: Science; Q; Eriophorum
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49960-0; https://doaj.org/article/0cb506dc87384afab76cbe2e4b6b6744

Abstract It has been widely reported that isoprene emissions from the Arctic ecosystem have a strong temperature response. Here we identify sedges (Carex spp. and Eriophorum spp.) as key contributors to this high sensitivity using plant chamber experiments. We observe that sedges exhibit a markedly stronger temperature response compared to that of other isoprene emitters and predictions by the widely accepted isoprene emission model, the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN). MEGAN is able to reproduce eddy-covariance flux observations at three high-latitude sites by integrating our findings. Furthermore, the omission of the strong temperature responses of Arctic isoprene emitters causes a 20% underestimation of isoprene emissions for the high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere during 2000-2009 in the Community Land Model with the MEGAN scheme. We also find that the existing model had underestimated the long-term trend of isoprene emissions from 1960 to 2009 by 55% for the high-latitude regions.