我找到了一个可行的解决方案：使用pyspark 1.2.0二进制文件就可以了。它被标记为实验性的，但是我能够通过opencv的适当组合来读取tiff图像。

import cv2
import numpy as np

# build rdd and take one element for testing purpose

L = sc.binaryFiles('hdfs://localhost:9000/*.tif').take(1)

# convert to bytearray and then to np array

file_bytes = np.asarray(bytearray(L[0][1]), dtype=np.uint8)

# use opencv to decode the np bytes array

R = cv2.imdecode(file_bytes,1)

请注意pyspark的帮助：

binaryFiles(path, minPartitions=None)

    :: Experimental

    Read a directory of binary files from HDFS, a local file system (available on all nodes), or any Hadoop-supported file system URI as a byte array. Each file is read as a single record and returned in a key-value pair, where the key is the path of each file, the value is the content of each file.

    Note: Small files are preferred, large file is also allowable, but may cause bad performance.