Comment on "Satellites reveal contrasting responses of regional climate to the widespread greening of Earth"

Yue Li; Zhenzhong Zeng; Ling Huang; Xu Lian; Shilong Piao

doi:10.1126/science.aap7950

Comment on "Satellites reveal contrasting responses of regional climate to the widespread greening of Earth"

Science. 2018 Jun 15;360(6394):eaap7950. doi: 10.1126/science.aap7950.

Authors

Yue Li¹, Zhenzhong Zeng^{2

3}, Ling Huang¹, Xu Lian¹, Shilong Piao^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. [email protected].
³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology and Biodiversity, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
⁵ Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.

PMID: 29903940
DOI: 10.1126/science.aap7950

Abstract

Forzieri et al (Reports, 16 June 2017, p. 1180) used satellite data to show that boreal greening caused regional warming. We show that this positive sensitivity of temperature to the greening can be derived from the positive response of vegetation to boreal warming, which indicates that results from a statistical regression with satellite data should be carefully interpreted.

Publication types

Comment

MeSH terms

Climate Change*
Climate*
Earth, Planet
Ecosystem
Temperature