Global teleconnections of climate to terrestrial carbon flux

We have applied association analysis to 17 years of climate index observations and predicted net ecosystem production on land to infer short-term (monthly to yearly) teleconnections between atmosphere-ocean climate forcing and terrestrial carbon cycles. The analysis suggests that on a global level, climate indices can be significantly correlated to net ecosystem carbon fluxes over more than 58% of the nondesert/ice-covered land surface, commonly with a lead period of 2-6 months. The Southern Oscillation (SO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) indices explain nearly equal portions of these significantly correlated area carbon fluxes. These significant teleconnections detected between surface climate and seasonal carbon gain or loss in terrestrial vegetation offer important capabilities for making inferences about the variability in the terrestrial carbon cycle of natural and agricultural ecosystems worldwide.