Green-up dates in the Tibetan Plateau have continuously advanced from 1982 to 2011

As the Earth's third pole, the Tibetan Plateau has experienced a pronounced warming in the past decades. Recent studies reported that the start of the vegetation growing season (SOS) in the Plateau showed an advancing trend from 1982 to the late 1990s and a delay from the late 1990s to 2006. However, the findings regarding the SOS delay in the later period have been questioned, and the reasons causing the delay remain unknown. Here we explored the alpine vegetation SOS in the Plateau from 1982 to 2011 by integrating three long-term time-series datasets of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI): Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS, 1982-2006), SPOT VEGETATION (SPOT-VGT, 1998-2011), and…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 0919466, NSF-0919466
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  Awards: NNX09AC39G, NNX11AJ35G
• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China
• CA
  Chinese Academy of Sciences
• CP
  China Postdoctoral Science Foundation