Cryospheric and Polar Processes Seminar: Jeff Thompson

Perspective from the periphery: Linking vegetation phenology and cryospheric change in Greenland

By Dr. Jeff Thompson - NSIDC/CIRES Visiting Fellow, University of Colorado Boulder

In recent years, studies have reported increased greening across the Arctic in response to climatic warming. Greening has been linked to a shortening of the snow-covered period and reductions in sea ice. While these relationships have been observed for the broader pan-Artic region, they have not always held for Greenland. In this talk I use a fifteen-year time-series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index obtained by MODIS to explore changes in the phenology of vegetation on Greenland's periphery and links to other cryospheric systems.