30-Year Land Surface Trend from AVHRR-Based Global Vegetation Health Data

Abstract

The past 30 years of environmental observations showed considerable global temperature increase and global changes in snow and ice cover, sea level, biological systems timing (plants, birds etc.) and others. It was also shown with 20-year satellite records that Earth vegetation has an early greening, especially in the northern latitudes. Currently, 10 more years were added to the satellite records requiring re-evaluation of vegetation trends. NOAA/NESDIS has recently updated long-term satellite records produced from AVHRR data. These innovations permitted to develop the new 30-year Global Vegetation Health (GVH) dataset and products. The GVH were processed comprehensively to remove noise even those which had not been removed before. This paper investigates the 30-year no-noise NDVI time series for the purpose of trend detection. Data showed that the 30-year trend both global and latitudinal is very negligible. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.