Climate extremes, including heatwaves, droughts, heavy rains, floods, storms, wildfires and compound events, are becoming more frequent and intense under ongoing climate change. These events can exert strong, nonlinear and persistent effects on greenhouse gas fluxes (CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O) variabilities, altering carbon and nitrogen cycling from short-lived emission pulses to ecosystem changes lasting years or decades. However, the mechanisms controlling these responses across spatial and temporal scales remain poorly understood, creating substantial uncertainty in predictions of biosphere–atmosphere feedbacks.
This session invites observational, experimental and modelling studies examining greenhouse gas dynamics during and following climate extremes across terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, including tundra, forests, wetlands, grasslands, croplands, rivers, lakes and oceans. We welcome contributions using in situ measurements, eddy covariance, chamber observations, isotopic techniques, experimental manipulations, process-based and Earth system models, satellite or airborne remote sensing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and causal-inference methods. Studies integrating multiple approaches are particularly encouraged, especially those seeking to identify underlying mechanisms, quantify resistance, resilience and legacy effects, or upscale responses from organisms and ecosystems to regional and global scales.
By bringing together diverse disciplines and methods, this session aims to identify common and contrasting greenhouse gas responses to climate extremes, showcase methodological advances and define critical knowledge gaps. Ultimately, we seek to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and improve predictions of greenhouse gas exchange under an increasingly extreme climate.