I would like to thank Dr. Peter Lawrence from CIRES, CU Boulder and Gordon Bonan from NCAR in Boulder for alerting us to the following paper:
Zaitchik, B.F., A.K. Macaldy, L.R. Bonneau, and R.B. Smith, 2006: Europe’s 2003 heat wave: A satellite view of impacts and land atmosphere feedbacks. Int. J. Climatol. 26: 743–769.
The abstract reads
“A combination of satellite imagery, meteorological station data, and the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis has been used to explore the spatial and temporal evolution of the 2003 heat wave in France, with focus on understanding the impacts and feedbacks at the land surface. Vegetation was severely affected across the study area, especially in a swath across central France that corresponds to the Western European Broadleaf (WEB) Forests ecological zone. The remotely sensed surface temperature anomaly was also greatest in this zone, peaking at +15.4°C in August. On a finer spatial scale, both the vegetation and surface temperature anomalies were greater for crops and pastures than for forested lands. The heat wave was also associated with an anomalous surface forcing of air temperature. Relative to other years in record, satellite-derived estimates of surface-sensible heat flux indicate an enhancement of 48–61% (24.0–30.5 W m−2) in WEB during the August heat wave maximum. Longwave radiative heating of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) was enhanced by 10.5 W m−2 in WEB for the same period. The magnitude and spatial structure of this local heating is consistent with models of the late twenty-first century climate in France, which predict a transitional climate zone that will become increasingly affected by summertime drought. Models of future climate also suggest that a soil-moisture feedback on the surface energy balance might exacerbate summertime drought, and these proposed feedback mechanisms were tested using satellite-derived heat budgets.”
The authors conclude with the text,
“This study further suggests that extreme heat waves have implications for ecology and land management. A number of studies focused on trends in NDVI across the higher latitudes, for example, have documented an increase in mean NDVI associated with the warming of recent decades (Zhou et al., 2001; Zhou et al., 2003; Stöckli and Vidale, 2004). For Europe specifically, Stöckli and Vidale (2004) document a 0.96 day year−1lengthening of the growing season (mostly due to earlier green-up) and a corresponding 0.78% increase in NDVI. In their German subdomain (closest to the present study region), the increase is even greater. The present results are not inconsistent with this finding, as the 2003 anomaly in NDVI was positive during spring green-up. In 2003, however, the negative impacts of late-summer drought overwhelmed the positive effects of a warmer spring, leading to a net reduction in NDVI integrated over the growing season. If heat waves like that of 2003 become typical in the future European climate, then it is possible that ‘extreme’ events may change the observed trend in NDVI in some portions of Europe, with implications for regional hydrology, agricultural and forestry outlooks, and terrestrial carbon sequestration.”
While the paper, unfortunately, includes text on what could occur in late 21st century France based on the multi-decadal global model predictions (which are not skillful prediction tools), it does provide further confirmation on the important role of landscape in this heat wave, as we discussed in our paper
Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2006: Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context? Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L23709, doi:10.1029/2006GL027470