Abstract: Based on the data of flax yields and air temperature during the period 1981-2000 for the growth seasons (from April to September) in Gansu Province, the spatiotemporal distribution of flax yield and climate variations on the interannual time scale were analyzed by wavelet analysis. The results showed that the variation change period of flax yield was identified to be 2-4 years in 1990's. The Singular Value Decomposition analysis (SVD) was applied to examine the large scale spatial correlative characteristics between the oil crop yield and surface air temperature. The first paired-modes explain 79.95% of the squared covariance between the oil crop yield and temperature. As a whole, the flax yield was sensitive to the changes of temperature. The most sensitive region was the west of Hexi Corridor.

Key words: Gansu, Gansu, Flax yield, Climate change, Response