Global Teleconnections of Ocean Climate to Terrestrial Carbon Flux

We have applied association analysis to 17 years of ocean climate observations and predicted net ecosystem production on land to infer short-term (monthly to yearly) teleconnections between sea surface temperature and terrestrial carbon cycles. The analysis suggests that, on a global level, ocean climate indices can be used to reliably predict net ecosystem carbon fluxes over more than 58 percent of the non-desert/ice covered land surface, commonly with a lead period of 2-6 months. These strong teleconnections detected between ocean surface climate and seasonal carbon gain in terrestrial vegetation offer important capabilities for making inferences about the variability in the terrestrial carbon cycle of natural and agricultural ecosystems worldwide .