We investigate the conditions under which satellite-retrieved column carbon dioxide concentrations directly hold information about surface carbon dioxide fluxes, without the use of inversion models. We show that OCO-2 column carbon dioxide retrievals, available at 1–3 month latency, can be used to directly detect and roughly estimate extreme biospheric CO₂ fluxes. As such, these OCO-2 retrievals have value for rapidly monitoring extreme conditions in the terrestrial biosphere.

Vegetation cover in the remote and cold areas of northern West Siberia is rapidly changing. Analysis of summer maximum vegetation productivity index collected over 15 years (2000–2014) by Terra/Aqua satellites revealed “greening” over the northern (tundra/tundra-forest) and widespread “browning” over the southern (taiga) parts of the region. The vegetation changes around 28 urbanized areas were different. Many Siberian cities become greener even against wider browning trends at the background.

We present an empirical method to retrieve actual evapotranspiration (ET) at a spatial resolution of 250m for the eastern Mediterranean based on observed relationships between satellite vegetation indices and eddy covariance ET. Our model was successfully evaluated against two physically based models and calculated ET from water catchment balances along rainfall gradient. In the absence of high-resolution models, our model is expected to contribute to the ecohydrological study of this region.