Local and Teleconnected Temperature Effects of Afforestation and Vegetation Greening in China

Overview

Journal Natl Sci Rev

Date 2021 Oct 25

PMID 34692111

Citations 3

Authors

Yue Li

Shilong Piao

Anping Chen

Philippe Ciais

Laurent Z X Li

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Afforestation in China provides carbon sequestration and prevents soil erosion, but its remote impacts on climate in other regions via the coupling of forest energy fluxes with atmospheric circulation are largely unknown. Here, we prescribe inventory-based forest cover change and satellite-observed leaf area index from 1982 to 2011 in a coupled land-atmosphere model to simulate their biophysical climate effects. Both local and global surface air temperatures show a seasonal contrast in response to past vegetation cover expansion over China: a phenomenon we primarily attribute to a variation of seasonality of vegetation greening. A large cooling in spring results in concurrent decreases in geopotential height over China and zonal wind over Mongolia, causing a dipole structure in the upper troposphere over the Arctic. This accounts for ∼58% of simulated spring warming over the Russian Arctic and ∼61% of simulated spring cooling over the Canadian Artic. Our results imply that spring vegetation dynamics in China may affect climate in northern high latitudes.

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