Influence of winter precipitation on spring phenology in boreal forests

Understanding the variations in spring vegetation phenology associated with preseason climate conditions can significantly improve our knowledge on ecosystem dynamics and biosphere–atmosphere interactions. Recent studies have shown that wet winters can delay the start date of the vegetation growing season (SOS) in the high latitudes. However, associated underlying mechanisms remain unclear due to the lack of observation sites as well as complex interactions between various climate and ecosystem variables. In this study, the impact of winter precipitation on year-to-year variations of the SOS in boreal forests from 1982 to 2005 was investigated. Two experiments were performed using the Community Land Model version 4.5. In the control experiment, observed precipitation was used; in the sensitivity experiment, precipitation in the year 1982 was repeated throughout the period. The SOS in the control experiment shows high temporal correlations with the SOS estimated from the satellite-retrieved leaf area index, indicating that the land model is capable of simulating realistic response of vegetation to interannual climate variability. The effects of winter precipitation on the SOS are examined by comparing the two model experiments for wet- and dry winters. After wet winters, the SOS was delayed by 2.7 days over 70.1% of the boreal forests than after dry winters; this accounts for 42.5% of the interannual variation in the SOS. The SOS delay is related to the decrease in the growing degree-days (GDD) based on soil temperatures, suggesting that the effects of heat exposure on vegetation growth is strongly modulated by winter precipitation. The GDD decrease is related to both the increase in snowmelt heat flux and reduced absorption of solar radiation, which are proportional to the amount of winter precipitation and the ratio of short plants to tall trees, respectively. Our results provide a physical basis for the winter precipitation–SOS relationship, suggesting that an increase in winter precipitation can alleviate strong advancing trends in spring vegetation growth in conjunction with global warming even for temperature-limited ecosystems.