Expansion of global drylands under a warming climate

Feng, Song; Fu, Qiang

doi:10.5194/acp-13-10081-2013

Cited by 821 publications

(687 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

633

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Studies of the impact of climate change on aridity during the 21st century have predicted increased aridity over most tropical and mid-latitude land regions (Feng and Fu, 2013), specifically over most of Africa, the Americas, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean region (Gao and Giorgi, 2008;Dai, 2011). Changes in aridity are influenced by many complex factors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Yin

et al. 2015

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT:The effects of aridity on ecosystems and water cycles are pronounced and have received considerable attention. However, aridity changes due to future warming and its regional variability over China remain uncertain. This paper aims to identify the spatiotemporal variations in aridity and its key influencing factors over China in the mid-21st century based on five general circulation models (GCMs) and four representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios. An aridity index (AI), defined as the ratio of reference evapotranspiration (ET o ) to precipitation (P), was calculated. We show that the GCM ensemble means are able to reproduce the variation of aridity during the baseline period. Generally, ET o anomalies are consistently positive. Other than for the RCP2.6 low-emission scenario, precipitation and aridity are both projected to increase. There are pronounced regional differences in aridity changes; i.e. wetter across most of western China and drier across most of eastern China in the mid-21st century. Negative AI anomalies in western China can be attributed mainly to the projected increase in precipitation. In eastern China, the AI was higher despite positive precipitation anomalies, due mainly to the greater effect of climate change on increasing atmospheric moisture demand. This suggests that evapotranspiration demand should be incorporated into aridity changes under future warming.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Yin

et al. 2015

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is particularly useful for dryland areas, which are more sensitive to water erosion, and to climate changes (Feng and Fu, 2013;Huang et al, 2012) because of their fragile biophysical conditions. In China's dryland region, various changes have been observed in temperature, precipitation and other climatic factors during the past decades (Fan et al, 2012;Ge et al, 2013;Meng et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2006;Zhao, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal variation and trends in rainfall erosivity in China's dryland region during 1961–2012

Yang

2015

CATENA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study evaluated rainfall erosivity and its changes in China's dryland region during 1961-2012, using a daily rainfall erosivity model, ArcGIS based spatial interpolation tools, and the Mann-Kendall and Sen's methods. It was found that mean rainfall erosivity was 2-4098 MJ mm ha −1 h −1 a −1 in the region, with the regional average of 794 MJ mm ha −1 h −1 a −1 , showing a significant increase trend accordingly with an increase in rainfall from northwest to southeast. Rainfall erosivity varied annually with the CV of 32.4-491.3%, and varied seasonally with about three-quarter distributed in summer. During 1961-2012, a statistically significant increase/decrease trend in rainfall erosivity was detected only for 24/10 stations or about 4.6/0.4% of the region, and a nonsignificant increase/decrease trend was observed for 32/45 stations or 16.5/10.0% of the region at the 50 to 90% confidence level. No statistically confidential trend was found for other 126 stations or 68.5% of the region. At regional level, mean annual erosivity of the arid zone indicated an upward trend, while the sub-humid zone a downward, but the semi-arid zone generally had no evidential trend. Comparing the 26 year's averages during 1987-2012 and 1961-1986, mean erosivity of the arid zone increased by 17.4%, the sub-humid zone decreased by 6.1%, and the semi-arid zone reduced slightly by 0.45%. The results suggest that change in the rainfall characteristics during the past half century had no significant influence on water erosion in the majority of the region, but it could probably induce an increase of water erosion risk in parts of the drier west and a slight decrease in parts of the wetter east including the Loess Plateau.

show abstract

“…The dominant role of the thermodynamic temperature warming in semi-arid areas indicates that dry lands may suffer from intense human activities that can induce strong local thermodynamic forcing due to the fragile ecosystems in dry lands, which are sensitive to strong interactions between human activities and climate changes (Charney 1975;Huang et al, 2008Huang et al, , 2010Rotenberg and Yakir, 2010). The semi-arid regions have expanded in the past half century (Feng and Fu, 2013;Li et al, 2015) and Huang et al (2016) projected that the dry lands will continue to expand in the future. Increased aridity, enhanced warming and unreasonable land use under drought conditions in semi-arid regions will cause land degradation and desertification.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different roles of dynamic and thermodynamic effects in enhanced semi‐arid warming

Guo

Guan

et al. 2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Enhanced warming in semi-arid regions has received much attention since it was first proposed, but the primary driver of this phenomenon remains unknown. This study applied dynamical adjustment to surface air temperature and partitioned the warming into two separate components: a thermodynamically forced component and a dynamically induced component. The results show that the mean amount of thermodynamic warming in the Northern Hemisphere in the study period 1902-2011 was 1.36 ∘ C/109 years and that the amount of dynamic warming was 0.14 ∘ C/109 years. In the mid-latitude zones of Asia, Europe, and North America, the thermodynamic warming was 1.60, 1.19, and 1.32 ∘ C/109 years, respectively, and the corresponding dynamic warming was 0.26, 0.14, and 0.09 ∘ C/109 years. Obviously, higher thermodynamic temperature warming was observed in semi-arid regions, suggesting that the enhanced semi-arid warming (ESAW) is the result of local thermodynamic effects. Thus, different local thermodynamic effects are responsible for the warming discrepancies in the semi-arid regions of Asia, Europe, and North America. Moreover, the considerable bias of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble mean temperature trend appeared in semi-arid regions rather than other regions indicate that the simulation of semi-arid regions is particularly complex and difficult.

show abstract

Expansion of global drylands under a warming climate

Cited by 821 publications

References 45 publications

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Spatiotemporal variation and trends in rainfall erosivity in China's dryland region during 1961–2012

Different roles of dynamic and thermodynamic effects in enhanced semi‐arid warming

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About