Albedo enhancement of marine clouds to counteract global warming: impacts on the hydrological cycle

Recent studies have shown that changes in solar radiation affect the hydrological cycle more strongly than equivalent CO₂ changes for the same change in global mean surface temperature. Thus, solar radiation management ??geoengineering?? proposals to completely offset global mean temperature increases by reducing the amount of absorbed sunlight might be expected to slow the global water cycle and reduce runoff over land. However, proposed countering of global warming by increasing the albedo of marine clouds would reduce surface solar radiation only over the oceans. Here, for an idealized scenario, we analyze the response of temperature and the hydrological cycle to increased reflection by clouds over the ocean using an atmospheric general circulation model coupled to a mixed layer ocean model. When cloud droplets are reduced in size over all oceans uniformly to offset the temperature increase from a doubling of atmospheric CO₂, the global-mean precipitation and evaporation decreases by about 1.3% but runoff over land increases by 7.5% primarily due to increases over tropical land. In the model, more reflective marine clouds cool the atmospheric column over ocean. The result is a sinking motion over oceans and upward motion over land. We attribute the increased runoff over land to this increased upward motion over land when marine clouds are made more reflective. Our results suggest that, in contrast to other proposals to increase planetary albedo, offsetting mean global warming by reducing marine cloud droplet size does not necessarily lead to a drying, on average, of the continents. However, we note that the changes in precipitation, evaporation and P-E are dominated by small but significant areas, and given the highly idealized nature of this study, a more thorough and broader assessment would be required for proposals of altering marine cloud properties on a large scale.     

Future impacts of global warming and reforestation on drought patterns over West Africa

This study investigates how a large-scale reforestation in Savanna (8–12°N, 20°W–20°E) could affect drought patterns over West Africa in the future (2031–2060) under the RCP4.5 scenario. Simulations from two regional climate models (RegCM4 and WRF) were analyzed for the study. The study first evaluated the performance of both RCMs in simulating the present-day climate and then applied the models to investigate the future impacts of global warming and reforestation on the drought patterns. The simulated and observed droughts were characterized with the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and the drought patterns were classified using a Self-organizing Map (SOM) technique. The models capture essential features in the seasonal rainfall and temperature fields (including the Saharan Heat Low), but struggle to reproduce the onset and retreat of the West African Monsoon as observed. Both RCMs project a warmer climate (about 1–2 °C) over West Africa in the future. They do not reach a consensus on future change in rainfall, but they agree on a future increase in frequency of severe droughts (by about 2 to 9 events per decade) over the region. They show that reforestation over the Savanna could reduce the future warming by 0.1 to 0.8 °C and increase the precipitation by 0.8 to 1.2 mm per day. However, the impact of reforestation on the frequency of severe droughts is twofold. While reforestation decreases the droughts frequency (by about 1–2 events per decade) over the Savanna and Guinea coast, it increases droughts frequency (by 1 event per decade) over the Sahel, especially in July to September. The results of this study have application in using reforestation to mitigate impacts of climate change in West Africa.     

大尺度土地利用变化对东亚地表能量、水分循环及气候影响的敏感性试验

利用NCAR大气环流模式CAM4.0,针对潜在植被和当代植被的分布情形进行了两组25 a的积分试验,探讨了土地利用变化对东亚地区地表能量平衡、水分循环和气候的可能影响.结果表明:以森林退化、农田迅速增加为主的当代土地利用变化,显著改变地表属性,使得东亚地区不同季节的地表反照率均明显增加,并显著改变东亚地区的冬、春季节的地表能量和水分循环.此外,当代大尺度土地利用变化对东亚地区大气环流也有一定影响,可引起东亚冬季风环流显著加强和东亚夏季较弱的偏南风异常.当代土地利用变化未能引起东亚地区近地面气温的显著变化,但可引起东亚北(南)部地区春季降水的显著增加(减小).     

Tropical land savannization: impact of global warming

This study investigates the impact of global warming on the savannization of the tropical land region and also examines the relative roles of the impact of the increase of greenhouse gas concentration and future changes in land cover on the tropical climate. For this purpose, a mechanistic–statistical–dynamical climate model with a bidirectional interaction between vegetation and climate is used. The results showed that climate change due to deforestation is more than that due to greenhouse gases in the tropical region. The warming due to deforestation corresponds to around 60% of the warming in the tropical region when the increase of CO₂ concentration is included together. However, the global warming due to deforestation is negligible. On the other hand, with the increase of CO₂ concentration projected for 2100, there is a lower decrease of evapotranspiration, precipitation and net surface radiation in the tropical region compared with the case with only deforestation. Differently from the case with only deforestation, the effect of the changes in the net surface radiation overcomes that due to the evapotranspiration, so that the warming in the tropical land region is increased. The impact of the increase of CO₂ concentration on a deforestation scenario is to increase the reduction of the areas covered by tropical forest (and a corresponding increase in the areas covered by savanna) which may reach 7.5% in future compared with the present climate. Compared with the case with only deforestation, drying may increase by 66.7%. This corroborates with the hypothesis that the process of savannization of the tropical forest can be accelerated in future due to global warming.     

全球变暖形势下中国陆表水分的变化

利用政府间气候变化委员会第四次评估报告（IPCCAR4）中的10个耦合模式CO：加倍试验和控制试验的模拟结果,分析了全球变暖背景下中国水分的变化。结果表明,随着全球变暖,东亚夏季风增强,冬季风减弱,使得冬夏季向中国区域输送的水汽都增强;中国区域降水,夏季除长江流域外基本都增加,冬季除华南外都增加。夏季降水蒸发差（P—E）除了在东北和南方增加外,从长江流域一直到西北有一带状减小带;冬季几乎所有模式的P—E表现为北方增加、南方减小。在全球变暖背景下,降水、蒸发和径流的综合结果以及积雪的作用使得土壤湿度在干旱区增加,且冬季干旱区土壤变湿的强度和范围大于夏季,然而在其他区域土壤湿度减少。上述结论是基于多模式集合平均结果,对未来气候的预估具有一定的参考价值,然而模式间存在较强差异性,仍具有较大不确定性。     

Predicting the impacts of global warming on wildland fire

Simulations of impacts of a double-CO₂ climate with the Changed Climate Fire Modeling System in Northern California consistently projected increases in area burned and in the frequency of escaped fires compared with simulations of the present climate. However, the magnitude of those increases was strongly influenced by vegetation type, choice of atmospheric general circulation model (GCM) scenario, and choice of climatic forcing variables. The greatest projected increase in fire severity occurred in grasslands, using the Princeton Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory GCM, with wind speed, temperature, humidity and precipitation as driving variables.     

Framework for integrated assessments of global warming impacts

This paper provides a framework for integrated assessment of the impacts of climate change on natural resources and sets the stage for papers that follow in this volume. Integrated assessments are used to organize large quantities of technical information bearing on complex issues (environmental and others) in ways that facilitate application of the information in decision making and policy setting. Any integrated assessment must be based on the best available information. For that reason this paper includes a ‘primer’ on the current (and presumably best available) understanding of the science underlying climatic change. The remainder of the paper describes the component parts of one possible framework for integrated assessment.     

Impacts of global warming on hydrological cycles in the Asian monsoon region

The hydrologic changes and the impact of these changes constitute a fundamental global-warmingrelated concern. Faced with threats to human life and natural ecosystems, such as droughts, floods, and soil erosion, water resource planners must increasingly make future risk assessments. Though hydrological predictions associated with the global climate change are already being performed, mainly through the use of GCMs, coarse spatial resolutions and uncertain physical processes limit the representation of terrestrial water/energy interactions and the variability in such systems as the Asian monsoon. Despite numerous studies, the regional responses of hydrologic changes resulting from climate change remains inconclusive. In this paper, an attempt at dynamical downsealing of future hydrologic projection under global climate change in Asia is addressed. The authors conducted present and future Asian regional climate simulations which were nested in the results of Atmospheric General Circulation Model （AGCM） experiments. The regional climate model could capture the general simulated features of the AGCM. Also, some regional phenomena such as orographic precipitation, which did not appear in the outcome of the AGCM simulation, were successfully produced. Under global warming, the increase of water vapor associated with the warmed air temperature was projected. It was projected to bring more abundant water vapor to the southern portions of India and the Bay of Bengal, and to enhance precipitation especially over the mountainous regions, the western part of India and the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. As a result of the changes in the synoptic flow patterns and precipitation under global warming, the increases of annual mean precipitation and surface runoff were projected in many regions of Asia. However, both the positive and negative changes of seasonal surface runoff were projected in some regions which will increase the flood risk and cause a mismatch between water demand and water availability in the agricul     

The ratio of land to ocean temperature change under global warming

The result in climate simulations, supported in the observation-based record, is that the ratio $\phi = T_{L} /T_{O} $ of land-average to ocean-average temperature change is greater than one and varies comparatively modestly as climate changes. This is investigated in results from the CMIP3 data archive of climate change simulations following the B1 and more strongly forced A1B scenarios as well as in 2×CO₂ integrations. The associated precipitation ratio $ \psi = P_{L} /P_{O} $ is also considered briefly. The behaviour of ? is analyzed in terms of a forcing-response view of the energy balance over land and ocean regions. The analysis indicates that the value of ??>?1 is not maintained by separate local balances over land and ocean but by an energetic balance that also involves a change in transport between the regions. The transport change does not restrain the land warming by exporting energy to the ocean region but, rather, the reverse. The anomalous transport is from the ocean to the land region even though the ocean warms less than the land does. Feedbacks in the ocean region, especially in the equatorial Pacific, do not sufficiently counteract the forcing and the result is an excess of energy that is transported to the land. The land warms in order to radiate away both the energy from the forcing over land but also the extra energy imported from the ocean region, thereby maintaining ??>?1. This situation can be understood to parallel the SST-forced case in model studies where ??>?1 despite the forcing being confined to the ocean area. The climate system is effective in redistributing forcing so that it is the local feedbacks, rather than the pattern of the forcing, that determine the temperature response. Land and ocean averaged quantities and budgets behave in a consistent manner to provide a simplified representation of the changes in temperature and energetic processes that are occurring. The geographical distributions of the terms do not, however, display a strong land/ocean demarcation. The land/ocean average budgets and balances are the residual of processes that vary considerably within the land and ocean boundaries.     

The impacts of global warming on farmers in Brazil and India

How big a threat is global warming to climate-sensitive and economically important sectors such as agriculture in developing countries? How well will farmers be able to adapt to the threats of global warming? This paper attempts to shed light on these two important questions. A cross-sectional analysis is employed to estimate the climate sensitivity of agriculture in Brazil and India. Using panel data from both countries, the study measures how net farm income or property values vary with climate, and consequently, how farmers in India and Brazil react and adapt to climate. The estimated relationships are then used to predict the consequence of alternative climate scenarios. Global warming by the end of the next century could cause annual damages in Brazil between 1% and 39% and between 4% and 26% in India, although some of this effect may be potentially offset by carbon fertilization. These estimates do not factor into account climate-induced extreme weather events.     

On the tropical origin of uncertainties in the global land precipitation response to global warming

Understanding the response of the global hydrological cycle to recent and future anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols is a major challenge for the climate modelling community. Recent climate scenarios produced for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are analysed here to explore the geographical origin of, and the possible reasons for, uncertainties in the hydrological model response to global warming. Using the twentieth century simulations and the SRES-A2 scenarios from eight different coupled ocean–atmosphere models, it is shown that the main uncertainties originate from the tropics, where even the sign of the zonal mean precipitation change remains uncertain over land. Given the large interannual fluctuations of tropical precipitation, it is then suggested that the El Niño Southern Ocillation (ENSO) variability can be used as a surrogate of climate change to better constrain the model reponse. While the simulated sensitivity of global land precipitation to global mean surface temperature indeed shows a remarkable similarity between the interannual and climate change timescales respectively, the model ability to capture the ENSO-precipitation relationship is not a major constraint on the global hydrological projections. Only the model that exhibits the highest precipitation sensitivity clearly appears as an outlier. Besides deficiencies in the simulation of the ENSO-tropical rainfall teleconnections, the study indicates that uncertainties in the twenty-first century evolution of these teleconnections represent an important contribution to the model spread, thus emphasizing the need for improving the simulation of the tropical Pacific variability to provide more reliable scenarios of the global hydrological cycle. It also suggests that validating the mean present-day climate is not sufficient to assess the reliability of climate projections, and that interannual variability is another suitable and possibly more useful candidate for constraining the model response. Finally, it is shown that uncertainties in precipitation change are, like precipitation itself, very unevenly distributed over the globe, the most vulnerable countries sometimes being those where the anticipated precipitation changes are the most uncertain.     

全球变暖对台风活动影响的研究进展

全球变暖是当前热点问题之一,各大洋区时有发生的超乎寻常的台风活动也广为关注.全球范围内的台风活动特征是否悄然发生了变化?这种变化与全球变暖是否存在关联?这些问题已成为国际台风界的重点研究内容之一,近年来取得了许多进展.文中从全球台风活动特征变化事实的观测研究,成因分析、数值模拟与预测等方面对此进行了概述.综合各方观点,得到主要共识如下:单个台风的异常活动不宜直接归因于气候变化;全球台风频数的年际变化趋势并不明显;沿海地区人口增长和基础设施增加是近期台风对社会影响加重的主要原因;自1970年以来,一些海区的超强台风比例明显增大,比目前数值模式的模拟结果要大许多;如果全球气候持续变暖,台风的最大风速和降水很可能会继续增加;尽管在台风记录中同时有支持和不支持人类活动(全球变暖的影响)信号存在的证据,但在这一点上还不能给出一致的肯定结论.另外,由于台风和相关气候资料存在均一性方面问题,气候数值模式对台风气候特征描述也存在缺陷,这两类问题的存在使得在目前阶段确切阐明全球变暖和台风活动的关系仍有极大的不确定性.     

东亚夏季海陆热力对比对全球变暖的响应

利用耦合模式比较20世纪气候模拟试验和21世纪SRES(Special Report on Emissions Scenarios)A1B情景气候预估试验结果,探讨了东亚区域海陆热力对比对全球变暖的响应。首先通过超级集合方法,重建了20世纪40a(1960—1999年)和预估了21世纪40 a(2020—2059年)东亚地区的海陆热力对比;在此基础上,分析了东亚夏季海陆热力对比的过去40 a的变化特征及其未来的可能变化趋势。结果表明,超级集合的方法能够有效地降低单个模式存在的不确定性,其结果优于多模式的算术平均结果。利用超级集合方法能够很好地再现1960—1999年间海陆热力差指数的变化特征,并且有效地降低与再分析资料的均方根误差。进一步分析发现,陆面温度在全球变暖背景下变化较明显,尤其在华南地区存在显著增温;而东亚大陆季风区,存在明显的降温趋势。利用超级集合方法预估未来海陆热力对比的结果表明,在2040年前存在较强的海陆热力差,而2050后海陆热力对比有减弱趋势。     

中全新世时期中国地区水循环因子变化的模拟研究

利用全球气候模式CAEM3嵌套区域模式MM5模拟了现代和中全新世时的气候,从模拟结果可以发现中全新世有效降水变化中心随季节变化,最大的有效降水增加出现在夏季东北地区和内蒙古东部,最大值超过3 mm/d;同时,黄河与长江之间区域降水减少,最大变化超过2 mm/d.中国北方地区云量增加,同时,中国东部的长江流域云量减少.高云量变化较小,低云量变化最大,最大变化超过2成.夏季,对应着黄河与长江之间区域的云量减少,这个区域的温度升高最大.从水汽的变化可以看到长江流域地区水汽减少,相对湿度也减少,这与云量的变化一致;华南地区水汽的变化与季节有关;东北地区水汽增加,相对湿度增大,对应云量的增加和降水增多.从结果可以发现相对湿度最大的变化超过15%,不是一个常数.有些地区温度升高,但是水汽却减少.但是,在LGM的温度降低的区域,水汽一致减少.这说明温度降低水汽对应减少,但温度升高不一定对应水汽增加.这与全球尺度水汽相对湿度基本保持常数的结果不同.中全新世时,长江流域除春季外变得干燥、少雨和高温,东北和内蒙古东部变得多雨和潮湿.     

Decrease in evaporation over the Indian monsoon region: implication on regional hydrological cycle

Using surface observations from 58 widely distributed stations over India, a highly significant (99.9 %) decreasing trend of pan evaporation (E_pan) of 9.24 mm/a/a is calculated for 1971 to 2010. This constitutes a ~10 % reduction of E_pan over the last four decades. While E_pan is decreasing during the wet summer monsoon season (JJAS), as well as during the dry rest of the year, the rate of decrease during the dry season is much larger than that during the wet season. Apart from increasing solar dimming, surface winds are also persistently decreasing over the Indian sub-continent at the rate of ?0.02 m/s/a resulting in ~40 % reduction over the last four decades. Based on PenPan model, it is shown that both the above factors contribute significantly to the decreasing trend in E_pan. On a continental scale, annual mean potential evaporation (E_p) is larger than rainfall (P or E_p-P > 0, moisture divergence) indicating that India is water-limited. However, during wet monsoon P > E_p (or E_p-P < 0, moisture convergence) indicating that India is energy-limited during this season. Long term data shows that annually E_p-P follows a significant decreasing trend indicating that water limitation is decreasing with time. This is largely due to stronger decreasing trend of E_p-P during the dry season compared to weaker increasing trend of E_p-P during the wet monsoon season. The scatter plot of E_p-P versus E_p also conveys that the decrease in E_p leads to increase in moisture convergence in wet season and decrease in moisture divergence in dry season.     

Climate-resilient agricultural water management to alleviate negative impacts of global warming in rice production systems

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - Improving the economic productivity of limited available freshwater through producing more rice with less water is essential to sustain paddy production...