Intercomparison of interannual changes in NDVI from PAL and GIMMS in relation to evapotranspiration over northern Asia

The authors' previous study found an interannual covariability between actual evapotranspiration (ET) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over northern Asia. This result suggested that vegetation controls interannual variation in ET. In this prior study, NDVI data from the Pathfinder AVHRR Land (PAL) dataset were analyzed. However, studies of NDVI interannual change are subject to uncertainty, because NDVI data often contain errors associated with sensor- and atmosphere-related effects. This study is aimed toward reducing this uncertainty by employing NDVI dataset, from the Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling Studies (GIMMS) group, in addition to PAL. The analysis was carried out for the northern Asia region from 1982 to 2000. 19-year interannual change in PAL-NDVI and GIMMS-NDVI were both compared with interannual change in model-assimilated ET. Although the correlation coefficient between GIMMS-NDVI and ET is slightly less than for PAL-NDVI and ET, for both NDVI datasets the annual maximum correlation with ET occurs in June, which is near the central period of the growing season. A significant positive correlation between GIMMS-NDVI and ET was observed over most of the vegetated land area in June as well as PAL-NDVI and ET. These results reinforce the authors' prior research that indicates the control of interannual change in ET is dominated by interannual change in vegetation activity.