Modeling Potential Impacts on Regional Climate Due to Land Surface Changes across Mongolia Plateau

Abstract

Although desertification has greatly increased across the Mongolian Plateau during the last decades of the 20th century, recent satellite records documented increasing vegetation growth since the 21st century in some areas of the Mongolian Plateau. Compared to the study of desertification, the opposite characteristics of land use and vegetation cover changes and their different effects on regional land–atmosphere interaction factors still lack enough attention across this vulnerable region. Using long-term time-series multi-source satellite records and regional climate model, this study investigated the climate feedback to the observed land surface changes from the 1990s to the 2010s in the Mongolia Plateau. Model simulation suggests that vegetation greening induced a local cooling effect, while the warming effect is mainly located in the vegetation degradation area. For the typical vegetation greening area in the southeast of Inner Mongolia, latent heat flux increased over 2 W/m2 along with the decrease of sensible heat flux over 2 W/m2, resulting in a total evapotranspiration increase by 0.1~0.2 mm/d and soil moisture decreased by 0.01~0.03 mm/d. For the typical vegetation degradation area in the east of Mongolia and mid-east of Inner Mongolia, the latent heat flux decreased over 2 W/m2 along with the increase of sensible heat flux over 2 W/m2 obviously, while changes in moisture cycling were spatially more associated with variations of precipitation. It means that precipitation still plays an important role in soil moisture for most areas, and some areas would be at potential risk of drought with the asynchronous increase of evapotranspiration and precipitation.

Hydro-Climatic and Vegetation Dynamics Spatial-Temporal Changes in the Great Lakes Depression Region of Mongolia

“…Changes in air temperature, the most prominent climate parameter, will indirectly have the most significant impact on vegetation growth. These changes are especially evident in sensitive areas of arid and semi-arid regions [36]. For example, in 2000, when the air temperature increased, the amount of precipitation decreased, and in the years 2010 and 2020, when the precipitation increased, the amount of vegetation cover increased in the basin, especially in the years when the NDVI and EVI values were high.…”

Spatial and temporal variations of grassland vegetation on the Mongolian Plateau and its response to climate change

“…Furthermore, when discussing the response of vegetation to climate change, this study does not consider the feedback effect of vegetation on climate, and our previous studies show that the feedback effect of vegetation change on regional climate is strong, which may affect the results of this paper, Yu L. X. et al ( 2020) determined the response of vegetation change to climate by using a high-resolution land atmosphere coupled regional climate model, and found that the northern part of northern China showed obvious cooling, including the Northeast Plain, the Loess Plateau and the eastern part of the arid and semi-arid areas in the north (Yu L. X. et al, 2020). Li et al (2022) used a long time series multi-source satellite and a high-resolution land-air coupled regional climate model (WRF) to investigate the climate feedbacks of surface changes observed in the Mongolian Plateau from the 1990s to the 2010s. According to model simulations, vegetation greening produces a local cooling effect, while vegetation degradation produces a warming effect (Li et al, 2022).…”

“…Li et al (2022) used a long time series multi-source satellite and a high-resolution land-air coupled regional climate model (WRF) to investigate the climate feedbacks of surface changes observed in the Mongolian Plateau from the 1990s to the 2010s. According to model simulations, vegetation greening produces a local cooling effect, while vegetation degradation produces a warming effect (Li et al, 2022). Liu et al (2022) used multi-source satellite measurements records and a high-resolution land atmosphere coupled regional climate model (WRF) to investigate the land surface changes and their associated thermal and wet effects in three major ecosystems in the Heilong-Amur River basin from 1982 to 2018, highlighting the different surface responses and feedbacks of different ecosystems to climate change, depending on the specific vegetation variation and background climate, which may lead to warming/cooling and wetting/drying effects (Liu et al, 2022).…”

“…He came to the conclusion that the desertification area on the Mongolian Plateau region has shown a weakening decreasing trend in recent decades (Guo, 2021). However, recent studies using remote sensing observations have revealed that there are significant regional differences in the vegetation changes on the plateau: the vegetation in the larger areas of Inner Mongolia has tended to become greener as a result of ecological conservation efforts, whereas the vegetation in some areas of Mongolia still shows general overall degradation (Li et al, 2022). Numerous studies have investigated how the various vegetation varieties react to climate change.…”