Vegetation's role in controlling long-term response of near ground air temperature to precipitation change in a semi-arid region

Abstract

The response of near ground air temperature to changing precipitation regimes has received extensive attentions in climate change studies. In semi-arid and arid regions, the mean annual temperature correlates negatively with precipitation. However, it remains unclear to what extent one unit change of precipitation can trigger temperature change (i.e., the temperature sensitivity to precipitation). Taking a semi-arid region in Northwest China as a study area, we quantitatively investigated the temperature sensitivity to precipitation change. Further analysis shows that the temperature sensitivity correlates well with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), indicating that vegetation plays an important role in controlling the long-term temperature sensitivity to precipitation change. Specifically, different land covers show significant differences in temperature sensitivity, with bare soil generally having a higher sensitivity while more densely vegetated areas such as forest and grassland having lower sensitivity values. This implies that vegetation contributes to reducing the temperature sensitivity to precipitation change through the land surface-atmosphere interaction in semi-arid and arid regions.