Teleconnections between Snow Cover Change over Siberia and Crop Growth in Northeast China

Cong Guan, Lingxue Yu, Fengqin Yan and Shuwen Zhang
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Cong Guan: College of Earth Science, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China
Lingxue Yu: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China
Fengqin Yan: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Shuwen Zhang: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-13

Abstract: Snow cover is a sensitive indicator of climate change, and the variations in snow cover can influence the global climate system and terrestrial water cycling. However, the teleconnections between snow cover changes of the northern hemisphere and the crop growth of Northeast China (NEC) are less documented. In this study, we estimated the correlations between spring snow cover area over Siberia (SSCA) and the regional climate, as well as the crop growth in NEC based on both satellite measurement and observational climate records from 1982 to 2015. The local temperature, including minimum temperature (Tmin) in May–June, maximum temperature (Tmax), and Tmin in July–August, showed significant negative correlations with SSCA. SSCA is found to be negatively correlated to rainfall during the beginning of the growing season, while positively correlated to rainfall during the peak growing season for the agricultural ecosystem of NEC. The remote responses of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to SSCA varied across different climate zones and different growing periods. The NDVI variations over cold and dry cultivated regions exhibit negative correlations with SSCA in May–June, which is opposite for the wetter areas. The negative correlation between NDVI over the agricultural ecosystem and SSCA during the peak growing season was also detected, implying the variations in SSCA might be an essential driving factor in affecting the crop growth through modifying the regional climate of NEC. In the future, more in situ observations and model simulations should be conducted to verify our results described here, which would have significant implications for maintaining regional food security and sustainable development in Northeast China under the changing climate background.

Keywords: snow cover changes; regional climate; vegetation growth; Northeast China; Siberia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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