Trends of Thermal, Wetness, and Vegetative Change in the Circumpolar Arctic

This dataset provides estimates of trends in temperature, moisture, and vegetation changes over the circumpolar Arctic. Time series trends were measured by the Theil-Sen slope and associated p-values for a variety of variables including 2-meter air temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, non-frozen season days, permafrost active layer thickness, snow cover, vapor pressure deficit, land surface water fraction, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and vegetation optical depth. Trends were measured annually and over specific seasons of spring (March to May), summer (June to August), autumn (September to November) and winter (December to February), and for the 1980-2020 and 1997-2020 time periods, depending on the variable and original data availability. Emerging hotspots of change were identified for the same variables and seasons, but only over the 1997-2020 period. In addition, a multivariate ranking was used to create combined hotspot layers to show areas of substantial changes in the thermal environment, moisture, and vegetation; these themes reflect landscape changes considered to be detrimental (e.g., a threat) to ecosystems and human populations. Ancillary files provide the boundaries of study regions, Brown permafrost regions, and a land cover product. The data are provided in cloud optimized GeoTIFF (COG) and shapefile formats.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Maintainer	Earthdata Forum
Last Updated	May 18, 2026, 21:20 (UTC)
Created	April 1, 2025, 19:34 (UTC)
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id	4884d6e0-baa4-487b-9436-7858881895d0
harvest_source_id	b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title	Science Discovery Engine
identifier	10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2322
license	https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified	2026-05-14T22:12:41Z
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	ORNL_DAAC
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	8e68c13a97b47d853db239340967f807e47c70e680db34f5cdc47db10a6fc149
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	[[{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":30.0}],"CARTESIAN"]
temporal	1980-01-01/2020-12-31
theme	{"Earth Science"}