Surface greenness and rainfall in spring have changed from the 1980s to 1990s over the North China Plain (NCP). The greenness changes are characterized by large increase in north and little in south with an obvious greening zone from the centre of the NCP to the northeast. The rainfall change has a similar spatial pattern with reversed sign. The correlation between changes in greenness and rainfall is significant and the corre...

A July–May precipitation reconstruction for the period AD 1816–2010 was developed from a tree‐ring width chronology of Picea wilsonii for the Xinglong Mountains area of Lanzhou. The reconstruction explains 55.8% of the actual precipitation variance during the calibration period from 1951 to 2010. Wet conditions prevailed during the periods 1822–1835, 1843–1858, 1870–1877, 1884–1891, 1911–1921, 1933–1938, 1944–1979 and 2009–201...