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	August 25, 2026, 09:55 (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	e9eef943-79b2-4f5e-a1df-b03918fef0c8
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	2026-08-17T22:16:02Z
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	ORNL_DAAC
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	4aa0d6680db1b6a338ecd241299fcdacbd23fb8e3b6f1a0474d9138f39f1ba71
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	["CARTESIAN", [{"WestBoundingCoordinate": -180.0, "NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90.0, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180.0, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": 30.0}]]
temporal	1980-01-01/2020-12-31
theme	{"Earth Science"}