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Specification of thermal growing season in temperate China from 1960 to 2009

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Abstract

A number of studies have reported an extension of the thermal growing season in response to the warming climate during recent decades. However, the magnitude of extension depends heavily on the threshold temperature used: for a given area, a small change in the threshold temperature results in significant differences in the calculated thermal growing season. Here, we specified the threshold temperature for determining the thermal growing season of local vegetation across 326 meteorological stations in temperate China by using vegetation phenology based on satellite imagery. We examined changes in the start, end, and length of the thermal growing season from 1960 to 2009. The threshold temperatures for determining the start and end increased strongly with increasing mean annual temperature. Averaged across temperate China, the start of the thermal growing season advanced by 8.4 days and the end was delayed by 5.7 days, resulting in a 14.1-day extension from 1960 to 2009. The thermal growing season was intensively prolonged (by 0.59 day/year) since the mid-1980s owing to accelerated warming during this period. This extension was similar to that determined by a spatially fixed threshold temperature of 5 °C, but the spatial patterns differed, owing to differences in the threshold temperature and to intra-annual heterogeneity in climate warming. This study highlights the importance of specifying the temperature threshold for local vegetation when assessing the influences of climate change on thermal growing season, and provides a method for determining the threshold temperature from satellite-derived vegetation phenology.

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Abbreviations

GIMMS:

Global inventory monitoring and modeling study

GSL:

Growing season length

MAT:

Mean annual temperature

NDVI:

Normalized difference vegetation index

SD:

Standard deviation

TSOS_SP:

Start of thermal growing season determined using threshold temperature specified for local vegetation

TSOS_FX:

Start of thermal growing season determined using a fixed threshold temperature of 5 °C across China

TEOS_SP:

End of thermal growing season determined using threshold temperature specified for local vegetation

TEOS_FX:

End of thermal growing season determined using a fixed threshold temperature of 5 °C across China

TGSL_SP:

Length of thermal growing season determined using threshold temperature specified for local vegetation = TEOS_SP – TSOS_SP

TGSL_FX:

Length of thermal growing season determined using a fixed threshold temperature of 5 °C across China = TEOS_FX – TSOS_FX

VSOS:

Start of growing season of vegetation determined using the GIMMS NDVI time series

VEOS:

End of growing season of vegetation determined using the GIMMS NDVI time series

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the “Integrated assessment and prediction of carbon dynamics in relation to climate changes in grasslands on the Qinghai–Tibetan and Mongolian Plateaus”, which was conducted under the Strategic Japanese–Chinese Cooperative Program on Climate Change funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency, and by the research funds of the Center for Global Environmental Research of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Onogawa 16-2, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan

    Miaogen Shen & Yanhong Tang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Jin Chen & Wei Yang

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  1. Miaogen Shen
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  2. Yanhong Tang
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  3. Jin Chen
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  4. Wei Yang
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Correspondence to Miaogen Shen.

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Shen, M., Tang, Y., Chen, J. et al. Specification of thermal growing season in temperate China from 1960 to 2009. Climatic Change 114, 783–798 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0434-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0434-4

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