Impact of Vegetation Types on Surface Temperature Change

Abstract

Abstract The impact of different surface vegetations on long-term surface temperature change is estimated by subtracting reanalysis trends in monthly surface temperature anomalies from observation trends over the last four decades. This is done using two reanalyses, namely, the 40-yr ECMWF (ERA-40) and NCEP–NCAR I (NNR), and two observation datasets, namely, Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). The basis of the observation minus reanalysis (OMR) approach is that the NNR reanalysis surface fields, and to a lesser extent the ERA-40, are insensitive to surface processes associated with different vegetation types and their changes because the NNR does not use surface observations over land, whereas ERA-40 only uses surface temperature observations indirectly, in order to initialize soil temperature and moisture. As a result, the OMR trends can provide an estimate of surface effects on the observed temperature trends missing in the reanalyses. The OMR trends obtained from observation minus NNR show a strong and coherent sensitivity to the independently estimated surface vegetation from normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The correlation between the OMR trend and the NDVI indicates that the OMR trend decreases with surface vegetation, with a correlation < −0.5, indicating that there is a stronger surface response to global warming in arid regions, whereas the OMR response is reduced in highly vegetated areas. The OMR trend averaged over the desert areas (0 < NDVI < 0.1) shows a much larger increase of temperature (∼0.4°C decade−1) than over tropical forest areas (NDVI > 0.4) where the OMR trend is nearly zero. Areas of intermediate vegetation (0.1 < NDVI < 0.4), which are mostly found over midlatitudes, reveal moderate OMR trends (approximately 0.1°–0.3°C decade−1). The OMR trends are also very sensitive to the seasonal vegetation change. While the OMR trends have little seasonal dependence over deserts and tropical forests, whose vegetation state remains rather constant throughout the year, the OMR trends over the midlatitudes, in particular Europe and North America, exhibit strong seasonal variation in response to the NDVI fluctuations associated with deciduous vegetation. The OMR trend rises up approximately to 0.2°–0.3°C decade−1 in winter and early spring when the vegetation cover is low, and is only 0.1°C decade−1 in summer and early autumn with high vegetation. However, the Asian inlands (Russia, northern China with Tibet, and Mongolia) do not show this strong OMR variation despite their midlatitude location, because of the relatively permanent aridity of these regions.