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Updated 15 December 2006

OUR CHANGING PLANET The U.S. Climate Change Science Program for Fiscal Year 2007 A Report by the Climate Change Science Program and The Subcommittee on Global Change Research A Supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 2007 Budget

Figure 7.  Observed Response of Temperature and Precipitation to Increase in Vegetation Greenness. (Left) Observed response of temperature to an increase in vegetation greenness, calculated from satellite observations. The units are C per 0.1 FPAR (fraction of photosynthetically available radiation absorbed by the plant canopy). This illustrates vegetation feedbacks on temperature resulting from month-to-month variability in leaf and plant amount. (Right) Same as the left figure, but showing the response of precipitation to a change in vegetation. Units are cm/month per 0.1 FPAR. Credit: Z. Liu, University of Wisconsin (reproduced from the Journal of Climate with permission from the American Meteorological Society).

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