Global warming is increasing the discrepancy between green (actual) and thermal (potential) seasons of temperate trees. Issue 5 (15th December 2022) - Fu, Yongshuo H.
Abstract: Over the past decades, global warming has led to a lengthening of the time window during which temperatures remain favorable for carbon assimilation and tree growth, resulting in a lengthening of the green season. The extent to which forest green seasons have tracked the lengthening of this favorable period under climate warming, however, has not been quantified to date. Here, we used remote sensing data and long‐term ground observations of leaf‐out and coloration for six dominant species of European trees at 1773 sites, for a total of 6060 species–site combinations, during 1980–2016 and found that actual green season extensions (GS: 3.1 ± 0.1 day decade −1 ) lag four times behind extensions of the potential thermal season (TS: 12.6 ± 0.1 day decade −1 ). Similar but less pronounced differences were obtained using satellite‐derived vegetation phenology observations, that is, a lengthening of 4.4 ± 0.13 and 7.5 ± 0.13 day decade −1 for GS and TS, respectively. This difference was mainly driven by the larger advance in the onset of the thermal season compared to the actual advance of leaf‐out dates (spring mismatch: 7.2 ± 0.1 day decade −1 ), but to a less extent caused by a phenological mismatch between GS and TS in autumn (2.4 ± 0.1 day decade −1 ). Our results showed that forest trees do not linearly track the new thermal window extension, indicating more complex interactions between winter and spring temperatures and photoperiod and a justification of demonstrating that using more sophisticated models that include the influence of chilling and photoperiod is needed to accurately predict spring phenological changes under warmer climate. They urge caution if such mechanisms are omitted to predict, for example, how vegetative health and growth, species distribution and crop yields will change in the future. Abstract : Global warming leads to substantial changes in the thermal conditions for vegetative growth. Based on in situ and remote sensing‐based phenological observations, we show that global warming is extending both the thermal (potential) and green (actual) season of temperate deciduous trees, but green season extensions lag behind the thermal season by 7.9–11.1 days and this mismatch was mainly driven by tree's leaf‐out dates did not follow proportionately the strong advance in the thermal season onset. Our results call for caution when using thermal sums to predict future changes in plant vegetative growth or any processes involving plant development.