Rising vegetation activity dominates growing water use efficiency in the Asian permafrost region from 1900 to 2100

Permafrost play an important role in regulating global climate system. We analyzed the gross primary productivity (GPP), net primary productivity (NPP), and evapotranspiration (ET) derived from MODIS and three earth system models participated in the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) in the Asian permafrost region. The water use efficiency (WUE) was further computed. The simulated GPP, NPP, and ET show slightly increasing trends during historical period (1900–2014) and strong increasing trends in projection period (2015–2100), and projected impacts of climate change on all variables are greater under high-emission scenarios than low-emission scenarios. Further analysis revealed higher increases in GPP and NPP than that of ET, indicating that vegetation carbon sequestration governs the growing WUE under historical and projected periods in this region. The GPP, NPP and ET showed higher changing rates in western, central and southeast areas of this region, and WUE (WUE_GPP, and WUE_NPP) shows the similar spatial pattern. Compared to MODIS-derived GPP, NPP, and ET during 2000–2014, Earth system models yield the best estimates for NPP, while slight underestimations for GPP and ET, and thus slight overestimations for WUE_GPP and WUE_NPP. This study highlights the predominant role of vegetation activity in regulating regional WUE in Asian permafrost region under future climate change. Vegetation domination of the growing water use efficiency implies that the permafrost region may continue acting efficiently in sequestrating atmospheric carbon in terms of water consumption throughout the 21st century.