Positive Associations of Vegetation with Temperature over the Alpine Grasslands in the western Tibetan Plateau during May
Topics: Climatology and Meteorology
, Land Use and Land Cover Change
, Earth Science
Keywords: Vegetation Changes, Land Cover/Land Use Changes, Land-Atmosphere Interactions, Positive Energy Process, Alpine Grasslands, Tibetan Plateau
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 21
Authors:
Shobha Kumari Yadav, Department of Geology & Geography, West Virginia University
Eungul Lee, Department of Geography, Kyung Hee University
Yaqian He, Department of Geography, University of Central Arkansas
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Abstract
Tibetan Plateau (TP) has undergone extreme changes in climatic and land surface conditions due to a warming climate and land cover changes. We examined the change in vegetation dynamic from 1982 to 2015 and explored the associations of vegetation with atmospheric variables over the alpine grasslands in the western TP during May as an early growing season. The linear regression analysis of area-averaged Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over the western TP in May demonstrated a 7.5% decrease of NDVI during the period from 1982 to 2015, an increase of NDVI by 11.3% from 1982 to 1998, and a decrease of NDVI by 14.5% from1999 to 2015. The significantly changed NDVI could result in substantial changes in surface energy balances as shown in the surface climatic variables of albedo, net solar radiation, sensible heat flux, latent heat fluxes, and 2m temperature. The land and atmosphere associations were not confined to the surface but also extended to the upper-level atmosphere as indicated by the significant positive correlations between NDVI and temperatures up to 300 hPa level and resulting in a 1 °K increase in the temperature at the 500 hPa level. Therefore, we concluded that the increasing (decreasing) vegetation cover in the western TP during May can increase (decrease) the temperatures near the surface and upper atmosphere through a positive physical linkage among the vegetation cover, surface energy fluxes, and temperatures. The positive energy processes of vegetation with temperature could further amplify the variations of temperature, and thus water availability.
Positive Associations of Vegetation with Temperature over the Alpine Grasslands in the western Tibetan Plateau during May
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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