What drives Arctic tundra plant growth (1982-2015)
What it measures. A summary of climate factors that may drive how much Arctic tundra vegetation grows, including greenness indices, sea-ice concentration, ocean heat, land surface temperature, and a summer warmth measure, across 33 growing seasons.
How it's made. Compiled from long-running satellite records (NOAA and DMSP weather satellites) and presented as time series and averages with calculated trends, covering the whole pan-Arctic tundra.
How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers explore how a warming climate and shrinking sea ice are tied to changes in Arctic tundra plant growth over time.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1982-01-01 → 2015-12-31
- Measured byNOAA POES (SSM/I) · DMSP (AVHRR)
- Processing levelLevel 4
- Spatial extent-180, 70, 180, 90
- FormatsCSV
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
- Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
- Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description
This dataset provides a summary of potential climate drivers of Arctic tundra vegetation productivity that have been compiled for growing seasons from 1982 to 2015. The scale of interest is the entire pan-arctic non-alpine tundra and the continental subdivisions of the North American and the Eurasian Arctic North of 70 degrees. These climate drivers include (1) maximum normalized difference vegetation index (MaxNDVI) and time-integrated NDVI (TI-NDVI), (2) summer sea ice concentrations, (3) oceanic heat content, (4) land surface temperature, and (5) summer warmth index (SWI). Data are provided variously as timeseries and weekly and bi-weekly averages over selected time ranges and study regions with calculated trends and trend significance. Data collected over 33 years were compiled to observe seasonal trends of vegetation productivity and to detect dynamics between arctic vegetation and climate drivers.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="Seasonality_Tundra_Vegetation_1606",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA
- Collection Bundle URL GET DATA
- ORNL DAAC Data Set Documentation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- ABoVE: Climate Drivers of Pan-Arctic Tundra Vegetation Productivity, 1982-2015: Seasonality_Tundra_Vegetation.pdf VIEW RELATED INFORMATION