Climate warming reshapes vegetation responses in China from temperature to precipitation

Climate change is creating temporal mismatches between hydrothermal supply and vegetation demand, thereby altering the dominant climate controls on vegetation, but the patterns and mechanisms of these changes remain unclear. Through a synergistic analysis of multisource and multitemporal remote sensing data, this study investigated the reshaping process of the dominant climate factors of China's vegetation from 1982 to 2022. It also examined spatial heterogeneity across topographic and hydrothermal subregions and across vegetation types, and explored the driving mechanisms. Results showed that the response intensity of more than 90% of vegetation to the climate was underestimated without considering the vegetation response time, while the rest was overestimated. China's vegetation response was primarily temperature-driven. However, under climate warming, 52.71% of vegetation shifted from temperature- to precipitation-driven regimes. Vegetation responses to precipitation accelerated and intensified over time, particularly in cold, dry, and high-altitude regions. In contrast, the direction of response changes in these regions differed markedly from those in warm, humid, and low-altitude regions. Grasslands, forests, and wetlands also exhibited increasing sensitivity to precipitation, and drought further amplified the vegetation response to precipitation. Overall, the dominant climate control on China's vegetation is shifting from temperature to precipitation. This transition suggests a potential early signal of increased precipitation control on global vegetation, with important implications for predicting ecological dynamics and developing climate adaptation strategies.