Abstract: The substantial role of land-climate interaction as part of the climate system has been widely and long-term concerned, however, until recently has rare attention been paid to regional-scale land cover/use change’s effects on climate in observational investigations, and the response of vegetation to climate change in climate simulation. The study evaluates the impact of land-atmosphere interaction on regional climate, and focuses on the above two aspects. The impact on regional climate of vegetation cover change is evident, and the transitional zone over northern China is identified as the most sensitive region over China by statistical analyses to the correlation between vegetation index data in previous seasons and summer precipitation. Comparison of the decadal trends of the observed station and the analyzed data suggests that urbanization and other land use changes may warm the surface with the 0.12C/10yr increases for the daily mean surface temperature over East China. Regional climate simulations found Land surface degradation over transitional zone and surrounding areas bring significant influences on not only surface climate but also atmospheric circulation, and these changes are in good agreement with observations and our statistical results, implying the desertification over northern China is one of causes responsible for decadal climate anomalies over China. Finally, we discuss the implication of accurate treatment of land surface and vegetation interaction in regional climate simulations.

Key words: Regional Climate, Land Cover/use Change, Simulation