Assessing Global Vegetation–Climate Feedbacks from Observations*

Abstract The feedback between global vegetation greenness and surface air temperature and precipitation is assessed using remote sensing observations of monthly fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) for 1982 to 2000 with a 2.5° grid resolution. Lead/lag correlations are used to infer vegetation–climate interactions. Furthermore, a statistical method is used to quantify the efficiency of vegetation feedback on climate in the observations. This feedback analysis provides a first quantitative assessment of global vegetation feedback on climate. In northern mid- and high latitudes, vegetation variability is found to be driven predominantly by temperature; in the meantime, vegetation also exerts a strong positive feedback on temperature with the feedback accounting for over 10%–25% of the total monthly temperature variance. The strongest positive feedback occurs in the boreal regions of southern Canada/northern United States, northern Europe, and southern Siberia, where the feedback efficiency...

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