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Arctic and alpine tundra ecosystems are large reservoirs of organic carbon^1,2. Climate warming may stimulate ecosystem respiration and release carbon into the atmosphere^3,4. The magnitude and persistency of this stimulation and the environmental mechanisms that drive its variation remain uncertain^5–7. This hampers the accuracy of global land carbon–climate feedback projections^7,8. Here we synthesize 136 datasets from 56 open-top chamber in situ warming experiments located at 28 arctic and alpine tundra sites which have been running for less than 1 year up to 25 years. We show that a mean rise of 1.4 °C [confidence interval (CI) 0.9–2.0 °C] in air and 0.4 °C [CI 0.2–0.7 °C] in soil temperature results in an increase in growing season ecosystem respiration by 30% [CI 22–38%] (n = 136). Our findings indicate that the stimulation of ecosystem respiration was due to increases in both plant-related and microbial respiration (n = 9) and continued for at least 25 years (n = 136). The magnitude of the warming effects on respiration was driven by variation in warming-induced changes in local soil conditions, that is, changes in total nitrogen concentration and pH and by context-dependent spatial variation in these conditions, in particular total nitrogen concentration and the carbon:nitrogen ratio. Tundra sites with stronger nitrogen limitations and sites in which warming had stimulated plant and microbial nutrient turnover seemed particularly sensitive in their respiration response to warming. The results highlight the importance of local soil conditions and warming-induced changes therein for future climatic impacts on respiration.

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km2 resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (−0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications.

Permafrost-affected soils contain large quantities of soil organic carbon (SOC). Changes in the SOC pool of a particular ecosystem can be related to its net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) in which the balance of carbon (C) influxes and effluxes is expressed. For polygonal tundra landscapes, accounts of ecosystem carbon balances in the literature are often solely based on estimates of vertical carbon fluxes. To fill this gap, we present data regarding the lateral export rates of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from a polygonal tundra site in the north Siberian Lena River delta, Russia. We use water discharge observations in combination with concentration measurements of waterborne carbon to derive the lateral carbon fluxes from one growing season (2 June–8 September 2014 for DOC, 8 June–8 September 2014 for DIC). To put the lateral C fluxes into context, we furthermore present the surface–atmosphere eddy covariance fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) from this study site. The results show cumulative lateral DIC and DOC fluxes of 0.31–0.38 and 0.06–0.08 g m⁻², respectively, during the 93 d observation period (8 June–8 September 2014). Vertical turbulent fluxes of CO₂-C and CH₄-C accumulated to −19.0 ± 1.2 and 1.0 ± 0.02 g m⁻² in the same period. Thus, the lateral C export represented about 2 % of the net ecosystem exchange of (NEE) CO₂. However, the relationship between lateral and surface–atmosphere fluxes changed over the observation period. At the beginning of the growing season (early June), the lateral C flux outpaced the surface-directed net vertical turbulent CO₂ flux, causing the polygonal tundra landscape to be a net carbon source during this time of the year. Later in the growing season, the vertical turbulent CO₂ flux dominated the NECB.

Snow is an important driver of ecosystem processes in cold biomes. Snow accumulation determines ground temperature, light conditions, and moisture availability during winter. It also affects the growing season's start and end, and plant access to moisture and nutrients. Here, we review the current knowledge of the snow cover's role for vegetation, plant- animal interactions, permafrost conditions, microbial processes, and biogeochemical cycling. We also compare studies of natural snow gradients with snow experimental manipulation studies to assess time scale difference of these approaches. The number of tundra snow studies has increased considerably in recent years, yet we still lack a comprehensive overview of how altered snow conditions will affect these ecosystems. Specifically, we found a mismatch in the timing of snowmelt when comparing studies of natural snow gradients with snow manipulations. We found that snowmelt timing achieved by snow addition and snow removal manipulations (average 7.9 days advance and 5.5 days delay, respectively) were substantially lower than the temporal variation over natural spatial gradients within a given year (mean range 56 days) or among years (mean range 32 days). Differences between snow study approaches need to be accounted for when projecting snow dynamics and their impact on ecosystems in future climates.

Warming-induced microbial decomposition of organic matter in permafrost soils constitutes a climate-change feedback of uncertain magnitude. While physicochemical constraints on soil functioning are relatively well understood, the constraints attributable to microbial community composition remain unclear. Here we show that biogeochemical processes in permafrost can be impaired by missing functions in the microbial community-functional limitations-probably due to environmental filtering of the microbial community over millennia-long freezing. We inoculated Yedoma permafrost with a functionally diverse exogenous microbial community to test this mechanism by introducing potentially missing microbial functions. This initiated nitrification activity and increased CO2 production by 38% over 161 days. The changes in soil functioning were strongly associated with an altered microbial community composition, rather than with changes in soil chemistry or microbial biomass. The present permafrost microbial community composition thus constrains carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical processes, but microbial colonization, likely to occur upon permafrost thaw in situ, can alleviate such functional limitations. Accounting for functional limitations and their alleviation could strongly increase our estimate of the vulnerability of permafrost soil organic matter to decomposition and the resulting global climate feedback. Carbon dioxide emissions from permafrost thaw are substantially enhanced by relieving microbial functional limitations, according to incubation experiments on Yedoma permafrost.

Current analyses and predictions of spatially explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions are overlooked. This is particularly important in relation to effects of observation height (e.g. vegetation, snow and soil characteristics) and in habitats varying in their exposure to radiation, moisture and wind (e.g. topography, radiative forcing or cold‐air pooling). Since organisms living close to the ground relate more strongly to these microclimatic conditions than to free‐air temperatures, microclimatic ground and near‐surface data are needed to provide realistic forecasts of the fate of such organisms under anthropogenic climate change, as well as of the functioning of the ecosystems they live in. To fill this critical gap, we highlight a call for temperature time series submissions to SoilTemp, a geospatial database initiative compiling soil and near‐surface temperature data from all over the world. Currently, this database contains time series from 7,538 temperature sensors from 51 countries across all key biomes. The database will pave the way toward an improved global understanding of microclimate and bridge the gap between the available climate data and the climate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions relevant to most organisms and ecosystem processes.