Continuous advance in the onset of vegetation green-up in the Northern Hemisphere, during hiatuses in spring warming

Abstract

Previous studies have documented substantial advancing trends in the onset date of vegetation green-up (VGD) during the 1980s and 1990s over the Northern Hemisphere, while later studies based on data from the spaceborne advanced very high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) have reported this trend stalled during the warming hiatus from the late 1990s to early 2010s. However, there is uncertainty in this finding of a hiatus in VGD advance due to the identification of quality issues associated with the data from AVHRR. Using the high-quality data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, we show VGD significantly advanced despite the warming hiatus due to the high sensitivity of VGD to temperature and the magnitude of VGD advance over 2000–2021 (2.5–2.6 days decade–1, P < 0.01) is close to that over 1982–1999 or 1982–2002 with intensive warming, which suggests caution be exercised in the inference of climate warming based on advances in spring phenology.