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On the relationship between vegetation and climate in tropical and northern Africa

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Abstract

Vegetation cover is a crucial component of the Earth’s climate system but, still, our understanding of the mechanisms governing the reciprocal influence between atmosphere and vegetation is limited. In this study, we investigate the unilateral atmospheric impact on vegetation cover in tropical and northern Africa, differentiated into regions with different circulation regimes and into detailed land-cover classes. In contrast to former studies, climate predictors from a regional climate model are used as input for a multiple regression model. Climate models provide consistent data without gaps at high spatial resolution, a considerably larger set of available climate variables and the perspective to transfer the statistical relationships to future projections, e.g., in the context of anthropogenic climate change. Indeed, robust climate predictors which drive up to 70 % of observed interannual vegetation variability could be extracted from the climate model. Besides precipitation and temperature, global radiation, and relative humidity play an important role. The statistical transfer functions are plausible in terms of the affected regions and land-cover classes and draw a rather complex picture of the atmosphere–vegetation relation in Africa.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the NASA GIMMS group for providing the AVHRR NDVI data and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission for providing the GLC2000 data set. The observational data sets have been kindly provided by the Climatic Research Unit. The regional climate modeling was supported by the Federal German Minister of Education and Research (BMBF) under grant no. 07-GWK-02 and by the Ministry of Science and Research (MWF) of the Federal State of Northrhine-Westfalia under grant no. 223-21200200.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234, Wessling, Germany

    Martin Schmidt, Doris Klein & Stefan Dech

  2. Department of Remote Sensing, Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Wuerzburg, Am Hubland, 97074, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Christopher Conrad & Stefan Dech

  3. Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Wuerzburg, Am Hubland, 97074, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Heiko Paeth

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  1. Martin Schmidt
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Correspondence to Heiko Paeth.

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Schmidt, M., Klein, D., Conrad, C. et al. On the relationship between vegetation and climate in tropical and northern Africa. Theor Appl Climatol 115, 341–353 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-0900-6

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