Temperature contributes more than precipitation to the greening of the Tibetan Plateau during 1982–2019

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is an ecologically fragile region that is sensitive to climate change. It has a strong influence on the East Asian atmospheric circulation. The vegetation of the TP has experienced changes in its range and abundance, mainly due to global warming. This study provides an in-depth and updated analysis of vegetation change and examines the influence of climate change on the change in vegetation cover (1982–2019). This study used trends, drought index, cross-correlation, coherence, and feature selection methods to examine the relationship between vegetation change and climatic variables (precipitation, temperature, and soil moisture). General greening was a major trend (55.59% and 64.33%) during 1982–2002 and 2003–2019, respectively. Browning accounted for a minor trend (2.86% and 2.73%) during 1982–2002 and 2003–2019. Temperature accounted for 45% and 38% of vegetation greening in 1982–2002 and 2003–2019, respectively, which was twice the greening caused by precipitation for each period. A combined analysis of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and climatic factors using wavelet coherence confirmed that the climatic variables contributed significantly (p < 0.01) to vegetation growth. Vegetation growth strongly responded to temperature with a lag time of 1–5 weeks throughout 1982–2019. Automatic feature engineering (AFE) also revealed that temperature is the most relevant variable for predicting vegetation change. Overall, our analysis suggests that temperature is a critical factor in controlling vegetation growth. The results have substantial implications for identifying ecosystem management measures for climate change adaptation across the TP.