Influence of landscape structure on local and regional climate

Pielke, R. A.; Avissar, Roni

doi:10.1007/bf00132857

Cited by 326 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

144

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…At smaller scales, many studies have shown that landuse practices such as deforestation or changes due to agricultural management as well as urbanization may affect regional climate, ecosystems and water resources (Segal et al, 1988;Stohlgren et al, 1998;Pielke and Avissar, 1990;Lemonsu and Masson, 2002;Lemonsu et al, 2006; LINEAR BREEZE SCALING 1767 Champollion et al, 2009) and, on a global scale, spatially heterogeneous land-use effects may be at least as important in altering the weather as changes in climate patterns associated with greenhouse gases (Pielke et al, 2002;Pielke, 2005). Surface heterogeneities over the continent induce spatial variability in surface heat fluxes that can create inland breezes similar to sea/land breeze systems (Mahfouf et al, 1987;Mahrt et al, 1994;Patton et al, 2005;Courault et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linear breeze scaling: from large‐scale land/sea breezes to mesoscale inland breezes

Drobinski

Dubos

2009

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sea/land breezes and inland breezes have in common the 'breeze' appellation but are essentially different. The land/sea-breeze horizontal extent exceeds 100 km, with the Coriolis effect dominating its dynamics. Conversely, inland breezes are confined between alternating patches of cold and warm surface temperature, over horizontal ranges never exceeding a few kilometres, with negligible Coriolis effect. Both land/sea-breeze and inland-breeze systems are embedded within the planetary boundary layer. Despite their superficial resemblance, however, their physics differs and this article attempts to determine the parameters controlling the transition between the processes driving large-scale land/sea breezes and those driving inland breezes.Rotunno's linear model of the sea breeze is extended in order to describe the transition from the sea-breeze regime to the inland-breeze regime, especially in terms of scaling laws. The scaling in the sea-breeze regime obtained by Rotunno is recovered. In this regime, the breeze cell tends to have a horizontal extent comparable to the Rossby radius. For the inland-breeze regime previously studied by Anthes, an important contribution of the present work is to take into account the effect of friction. This effect is non-trivial, as it introduces an inner region with depth controlled by friction. We demonstrate this effect by performing an asymptotic analysis over a range of horizontal scales that are smaller than the Rossby radius but still much larger than the planetary boundary-layer depth, hence near-hydrostatic. All the dominant terms of the breeze circulation budget are within the inner layer, where friction and buoyancy dominate the Coriolis effect and the outer-layer terms and determine the breeze-cell shape and intensity.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linear breeze scaling: from large‐scale land/sea breezes to mesoscale inland breezes

Drobinski

Dubos

2009

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[4] Vegetation influences climate through land surface properties, e.g., albedo, surface roughness, rooting depth, leaf area index, and canopy resistance [Pielke and Avissar, 1990] over a range of spatial and temporal scales [Pielke et al, 1993[Pielke et al, , 1998]. These land surface characteristics vary by land cover type.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of agricultural practice on regional climate in a coupled land surface mesoscale model

et al. 2005

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

[1] The land surface has been shown to form strong feedbacks with climate due to linkages between atmospheric conditions and terrestrial ecosystem exchanges of energy, momentum, water, and trace gases. Although often ignored in modeling studies, land management itself may form significant feedbacks. Because crops are harvested earlier under drier conditions, regional air temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture, for example, affect harvest timing, particularly of rain-fed crops. This removal of vegetation alters the land surface characteristics and may, in turn, affect regional climate. We applied a coupled climate model (MM5) and land surface model (LSM1) to examine the effects of early and late winter wheat harvest on regional climate in the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility in the Southern Great Plains, where winter wheat accounts for 20% of the land area. Within the harvested, winter wheat region, simulated 2 m air temperature was 1.3°C warmer in the early harvest scenario at midday averaged over the 2 weeks following harvest. Soils in the harvested area were drier and warmer in the top 10 cm and wetter in the 10-20 cm layer compared to those in the late harvest. Midday soils were 2.5°C warmer in the harvested area at midday averaged over the 2 weeks following harvest. Harvest also dramatically altered latent and sensible heat fluxes. Although differences between scenarios diminished once both scenarios were harvested, the short-term impacts of land management on climate were comparable to those from land cover change demonstrated in other studies.

show abstract

“…Local surface temperature would fall in response to the decreased surface radiation loading associated with deforestation if radiation were the only energy transfer process involved. Similar to the global analysis 15,16 , the surface temperature change would be DT s~l0 DS, where DS , 0 and the temperature sensitivity resulting from the longwave radiation feedback l 0 5 1/(4sT s…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Observed increase in local cooling effect of deforestation at higher latitudes

Lee

Goulden

Hollinger

et al. 2011

Nature

601

715

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Deforestation in mid-to high latitudes is hypothesized to have the potential to cool the Earth's surface by altering biophysical processes [1][2][3] . In climate models of continental-scale land clearing, the cooling is triggered by increases in surface albedo and is reinforced by a land albedo-sea ice feedback 4,5 . This feedback is crucial in the model predictions; without it other biophysical processes may overwhelm the albedo effect to generate warming instead 5 . Ongoing land-use activities, such as land management for climate mitigation, are occurring at local scales (hectares) presumably too small to generate the feedback, and it is not known whether the intrinsic biophysical mechanism on its own can change the surface temperature in a consistent manner 6,7 . Nor has the effect of deforestation on climate been demonstrated over large areas from direct observations. Here we show that surface air temperature is lower in open land than in nearby forested land. The effect is 0.85 6 0.44 K (mean 6 one standard deviation) northwards of 456 N and 0.21 6 0.53 K southwards. Below 356 N there is weak evidence that deforestation leads to warming. Results are based on comparisons of temperature at forested eddy covariance towers in the USA and Canada and, as a proxy for small areas of cleared land, nearby surface weather stations. Night-time temperature changes unrelated to changes in surface albedo are an important contributor to the overall cooling effect. The observed latitudinal dependence is consistent with theoretical expectation of changes in energy loss from convection and radiation across latitudes in both the daytime and night-time phase of the diurnal cycle, the latter of which remains uncertain in climate models 8 .The latitudinal gradient of land-use impact is evident in the comparison of the surface air temperature recorded at FLUXNET (www.fluxnet.ornl.gov) forest towers 9 (Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1) and surface weather stations in North America (Fig. 1a). Here we use the surface stations as proxies for cleared land. In accordance with the requirement of the World Meteorological Organization, these stations are located in open grassy fields that have biophysical characteristics similar to those of open land, such as being covered by snow in northern latitudes in the winter 10 . Latitude accounts for 31% of the variations in the temperature difference DT between the forest sites and the adjacent open lands (number of site pairs n 5 37). The rate of change in DT with latitude is 20.070 6 0.010 K per degree (mean 6 one standard error, s.e., P , 0.005). At these sites, the annual net all-wave radiation R n

show abstract

Influence of landscape structure on local and regional climate

Cited by 326 publications

References 26 publications

Linear breeze scaling: from large‐scale land/sea breezes to mesoscale inland breezes

Linear breeze scaling: from large‐scale land/sea breezes to mesoscale inland breezes

Impact of agricultural practice on regional climate in a coupled land surface mesoscale model

Observed increase in local cooling effect of deforestation at higher latitudes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About