Negative extreme events in gross primary productivity and their drivers in China during the past three decades

•The first time to analyze spatio-temporally contiguous extreme GPP events in China.•GPP extreme events decreased annual GPP by 2.8% in TRENDY and 2.3% in Yao-GPP.•Hotspots of GPP extreme events were diagnosed in North China and Northeast China.•GPP is more sensitive to heat/drought than to cold/wet during extreme events.•The impacts of cold spells on GPP are notable in southern China. Climate extremes have remarkable impacts on ecosystems and are expected to increase with future global warming. However, only few studies have focused on the ecological extreme events and their drivers in China. In this study, we carried out an analysis of negative extreme events in gross primary productivity (GPP) in China and the sub-regions during 1982–2015, using monthly GPP simulated by 12 process-based models (TRENDYv6) and an observation-based model (Yao-GPP). Extremes were defined as the negative 5th percentile of GPP anomalies, which were further merged into individual extreme events using a three-dimensional contiguous algorithm. Spatio-temporal patterns of negative GPP anomalies were analyzed by taking the 1000 largest extreme events into consideration. Results showed that the effects of extreme events decreased annual GPP by 2.8% (i.e. 208 TgC year−1) in TRENDY models and 2.3% (i.e. 151 TgC year−1) in Yao-GPP. Hotspots of extreme GPP deficits were mainly observed in North China (−53 gC m−2 year−1) in TRENDY models and Northeast China (−42 gC m−2 year−1) in Yao-GPP. For China as a whole, attribution analyses suggested that extreme low precipitation was associated with 40%–50% of extreme negative GPP events. Most events in northern and western China could be explained by meteorological droughts (i.e. low precipitation) while GPP extreme events in southern China were more associated with temperature extremes, in particular with cold spells. GPP was revealed to be much more sensitive to heat/drought than to cold/wet extreme events. Combined with projected changes in climate extremes in China, GPP negative anomalies caused by drought events in northern China and by temperature extremes in southern China might be more prominent in the future.