UC Irvine

Warming climate in the Arctic is leading to an increase in isoprene emission from ecosystems. We assessed the influence of temperature on isoprene emission from Arctic willows with laboratory and field measurements. Our findings indicate that the hourly temperature response curve of Salix spp., the dominant isoprene emitting shrub in the Arctic, aligns with that of temperate plants. In contrast, the isoprene capacity of willows exhibited a more substantial than expected response to the mean ambient temperature of the previous day, which is much stronger than the daily temperature response predicted by the current version of the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN). With a modified algorithm from this study, MEGAN predicts 66% higher isoprene emissions for Arctic willows during an Arctic heatwave. However, despite these findings, we are still unable to fully explain the high temperature sensitivity of isoprene emissions from high latitude ecosystems.