Study on the relationship between summer precipitation over China and spring NDVI in Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Many works had shown that the importance of vegetation to climate change, and because of its unique height and extent, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has a great impact on the climate and climate change over East Asia. So the relationship between spring NDVI over TP and summer precipitation is studied by statistical methods in this paper. The influences of NDVI variability in spring over the TP on China summer precipitation is investigated through the correlation analysis and singular value decomposition analysis by using remote sensing normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) datasets and precipitation data of 723 observational stations in Southwest China for the period of 1982–2001. In a word, Correlation and SVD analyze show that the correlation coefficient between spring NDVI over TP and summer precipitation over China presents a spatial distribution pattern “+-+”from northeast China to southeast China. An obvious annual precipitation difference is also observed in high and low spring NDVI over TP by composite analysis. Corresponding to the NDVI in preceding spring is positive departure distribution over TP, especially in mid-western and northern arid, the precipitation appeared an obviously decrease trend in Yangtze river and increase in northeast and southeast China, vice versa.