Can changes in autumn phenology facilitate earlier green-up date of northern vegetation?

Abstract Climate warming has induced substantial advances in the onset of vegetation green-up in the northern hemisphere during recent decades. To date, however, the temporal changes in green-up date have not been adequately explained by the statistical relationships between green-up date and climatic factors, posing challenges in the attribution and prediction of phenological change. In this study, we thus turned to focus on autumn phenology, a critical biotic factor that is likely to affect the subsequent spring phenology of vegetation. Using satellite-retrieved start and end of growing season (SOS and EOS) over the period from 1982 to 2015, we examined the association between the EOS and the SOS in the following year in northern middle and high latitudes (north of 25°N). Interannual changes in SOS were significantly (P