Soil moisture-based study of the variability of dry-wet climate and climate zones in China

Li, Mingxing; Ma, Zhuguo

doi:10.1007/s11434-012-5428-0

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, the application of soil moisture is restricted by the scarcity of station observations and problematic results derived from remote sensing [ Kerr , ]. Therefore, studies of soil moisture are usually based on the outputs from numerical models [ Keyantash and Dracup , ; Qian et al ., ; Li and Ma , ], which contain large biases and require careful validation [ Qian et al ., ].…”

Section: Dryland Distribution and Measures Of Ariditymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dryland climate change: Recent progress and challenges

Huang

et al. 2017

Reviews of Geophysics

591

331

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drylands are home to more than 38% of the world's population and are one of the most sensitive areas to climate change and human activities. This review describes recent progress in dryland climate change research. Recent findings indicate that the long‐term trend of the aridity index (AI) is mainly attributable to increased greenhouse gas emissions, while anthropogenic aerosols exert small effects but alter its attributions. Atmosphere‐land interactions determine the intensity of regional response. The largest warming during the last 100 years was observed over drylands and accounted for more than half of the continental warming. The global pattern and interdecadal variability of aridity changes are modulated by oceanic oscillations. The different phases of those oceanic oscillations induce significant changes in land‐sea and north‐south thermal contrasts, which affect the intensity of the westerlies and planetary waves and the blocking frequency, thereby altering global changes in temperature and precipitation. During 1948–2008, the drylands in the Americas became wetter due to enhanced westerlies, whereas the drylands in the Eastern Hemisphere became drier because of the weakened East Asian summer monsoon. Drylands as defined by the AI have expanded over the last 60 years and are projected to expand in the 21st century. The largest expansion of drylands has occurred in semiarid regions since the early 1960s. Dryland expansion will lead to reduced carbon sequestration and enhanced regional warming. The increasing aridity, enhanced warming, and rapidly growing population will exacerbate the risk of land degradation and desertification in the near future in developing countries.

show abstract

Section: Dryland Distribution and Measures Of Ariditymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dryland climate change: Recent progress and challenges

Huang

et al. 2017

Reviews of Geophysics

591

331

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Soil moisture simulations derived from land surface models are widely used to assess hydrological drought conditions (Sheffield and Wood, 2008;Wu et al, 2011;Li and Ma, 2012). Soil moisture drought in China shows roughly the similar increasing trend in the last several decades as other drought indices (Wang et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of surface wind speed decline on modeled hydrological conditions in China

Liu

Zhang

Tang

et al. 2014

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Surface wind speed decline in China has been widely reported, but its effects on hydrology have not been fully evaluated to date. In this study, the effects of wind speed change on modeled hydrological conditions are investigated using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model for China during the 1966-2011 period. Two model experiments, i.e., VIC simulations with the observed (EXP1) and detrended wind speed (EXP2), are performed over the major river basins in China. The differences between the two experiments are analyzed to assess the effects of wind speed decline. Results show that wind speed has decreased by 29 % in China. The wind speed decline would have resulted in a decrease in evapotranspiration of 1-3 % of mean annual evapotranspiration and an increase in runoff of 1-6 % of mean annual runoff at most basins in China. The sensitivities of evapotranspiration and runoff changes to wind speed change are larger in humid areas than dry areas, while the sensitivity of soil moisture change to wind speed change is situation dependent. The wind speed decline would have offset the expansion of the drought area in China. It has contributed to reducing drought areas by 8.8 % of the mean drought area (i.e., approximate 106 × 10 3 km 2 out of 1.2 × 10 6 km 2 ) over China. The reductions of soil moisture drought induced by wind speed decline are large (more than 5 % of the mean drought area) in most basins, except in the Southwest and Pearl River basins.

show abstract

“…Upon examining the arid/humid region switch, previous studies pointed out that the boundaries of the East Asian climate transition zone would expand in both directions (Wang et al, 2017). The subtropical humid region in Southeast China showed a contraction, and the semi-arid and sub-humid regions in northern China showed a southeast expansion by the end of this century (Chan and Wu 2015;Li and Ma 2013;Huang et al 2017). The trends they gave are similar to the trends in this study, but the values are slightly different.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arid/humid patterns over Asia in response to national-committed emission reductions under the Paris agreement

Wang

Zhang

2020

Prog Earth Planet Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The evolution of regional arid/humid patterns caused by global climate change deserves attention. We investigated the changes in the area of arid/humid climate regions over Asia under the aegis of national-committed emission reductions to comply with the Paris Agreement using an ensemble of 17 global climate models (GCMs) from the Fifth Coupled Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) archives. Our results indicated an overall trend towards aridity in a future warmer climate based on an aridity index (AI), defined as the ratio of precipitation to potential evapotranspiration (PET). In the future, the humid region will contract and the arid region and arid/humid transition zones will expand. Compared with the present period, arid/humid region switch is projected to occur in a land area of 2512.8 × 10 3 km 2 over Asia under the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC)-pledge scenario. If global warming is controlled to the ambitious 2.0°C and 1.5°C scenarios instead of that of the INDCpledge scenario, a decrease in the changes in the area of arid/humid regions by more than half would be expected. In addition, the arid/humid regions with continuous global warming are estimated to contract/expand greatly. Changes in the spatial pattern of the arid/humid zones over Asia show strong similarities between multimodel simulations, although there are some differences in detail.

show abstract

Soil moisture-based study of the variability of dry-wet climate and climate zones in China

Cited by 25 publications

References 43 publications

Dryland climate change: Recent progress and challenges

Dryland climate change: Recent progress and challenges

Effects of surface wind speed decline on modeled hydrological conditions in China

Arid/humid patterns over Asia in response to national-committed emission reductions under the Paris agreement

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About