2,2,3,1,4- 1Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
- 2Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
- 3Department of Landscape Architecture and Rural Systems Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.
- 4State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Vegetation greening is commonly viewed as a proxy of increasing land carbon sink since the 1980s. Here we show a weakening or reversal of the coupling between vegetation greening and land sink trends over the recent decade by integrating regional carbon sink estimated by atmospheric measurements with satellite-based greening signals from optical vegetation index. While vegetation greening continued during the recent decade in the northern lands, carbon sinks decreased, implying a carbon sink deficit of 0.37 PgC yr-1 compared to the cases when the coupling remained constant. In addition to changes in annual and seasonal climate, recent increases in hot extremes and forest disturbances explain 37% and 22% of the carbon sink deficit. This study underscores the imperative to improve the representation of the impacts of climate extremes and disturbances in predictive models of the land sinks, and to bolster forest management practices to maintain ecosystem functioning when facing climate extremes and disturbances.
How to cite: Wang, K., Ciais, P., Xu, Y., Wang, X., Ryu, Y., Zhu, D., Anniwaer, N., Li, X., Tang, S., Yang, H., Piao, S., and Wang, Y.: Weakening and reversal of greenness-carbon sink coupling across northern lands, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15770, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15770, 2026.
