黄河流域未来气候-水文变化的模拟研究

将大尺度半分布式水文模型VIC应用到黄河上中游流域(花园口水文断面以上),并利用区域气候模式RegCM4.0单向嵌套全球气候模式BCC_CSM1.1,动力降尺度到黄河流域的模拟结果驱动VIC模型,开展在新的典型浓度路径下(RCP4.5和RCP8.5)黄河流域未来气候和水文变化的离线模拟。模拟结果显示,在RCP4.5和RCP8.5排放情景下,黄河流域21世纪平均地表气温相对于1971—2000年均呈显著上升趋势,2019—2048年上升1.2—1.5℃,2069—2098年上升2.19—3.9℃。未来年平均降水量有微弱的增大,2019—2048年增幅为6%左右,2069—2098年增幅为1.4%—5.6%。未来蒸发量增大明显,2069—2098年年平均蒸发量最大可增加9.6%。2019—2048年花园口水文站的年平均径流量增大3.4%—7.4%,2069—2098年年平均径流量转为减少,减幅为3.3%—5.3%。黄河上游地区未来气候和水文变化趋势与黄河流域基本一致,但未来年径流量变幅低于黄河流域,相对比较稳定。     

The impact of future climate change and potential adaptation methods on Maize yields in West Africa

Using recent advances in statistical crop yield modelling and a unique dataset consisting of yield time series for Russian regions over the period from 1955 to 2012, the study investigates the potential impact of climate change (CC) on the productivity of the three most important grains. Holding current grain growing areas fixed, the aggregate productivity of the three grains is predicted to decrease by 6.7% in 2046–2065 and increase by 2.6% in 2081–2100 compared to 1971–2000 under the most optimistic representative emission concentration pathway (RCP). Based on the projections for the three other RCPs, the aggregate productivity of the three studied crops is assessed to decrease by 18.0, 7.9 and 26.0% in the medium term and by 31.2, 25.9 and 55.4% by the end of the century. Our results indicate that CC might have a positive effect on winter wheat, spring wheat and spring barley productivity in a number of regions in the Northern and Siberian parts of Russia. However, due to the highly damaging CC impact on grain production in the most productive regions located in the South of the country, the overall impact tends to be negative. Therefore, a shift of agricultural production to the Northern regions of the country could reduce the negative impact of CC on grain production only to a limited extent. More vigorous adaptation measures are required to maintain current grain production volumes in Russia under CC.     

Modeling the impacts of reforestation on future climate in West Africa

This study investigates the potential impacts of reforestation in West Africa on the projected regional climate in the near two decades (2031–2050) under the SRES A1B scenario. A regional climate model (RegCM3) forced with a global circulation model (ECHAM5) simulations was used for the study. The study evaluates the capability of the regional model in simulating the present-day climate over West Africa, projects the future climate over the region and investigates impacts of seven hypothetical reforestation options on the projected future climate. Three of these reforestation options assume zonal reforestation over West Africa (i.e., over the Sahel, Savanna and Guinea), while the other four assume random reforestation over Nigeria. With the elevated GHGs (A1B scenario), a warmer and drier climate is projected over West Africa in 2031–2050. The maximum warming (+2.5°C) and drying (?2?mm?day^?1) occur in the western part of the Sahel because the West Africa Monsoon (WAM) flow is stronger and deflects the cool moist air more eastward, thereby lowering the warming and drying in the eastern part. In the simulations, reforestation reduces the projected warming and drying over the reforested zones but increases them outside the zones because it influences the northward progression of WAM in summer. It reduces the speed of the flow by weakening the temperature gradient that drives the flow and by increasing the surface drag on the flow over the reforested zone. Hence, in summer, the reforestation delays the onset of monsoon flow in transporting cool moist air over the area located downwind of the reforested zone, consequently enhancing the projected warming and drying over the area. The impact of reforesting Nigeria is not limited to the country; while it lowers the warming over part of the country (and over Togo), it increases the warming over Chad and Cameroon. This study, therefore, suggests that using reforestation to mitigate the projected future climate change in West Africa could have both positive and negative impacts on the regional climate, reducing temperature in some places and increasing it in others. Hence, reforestation in West Africa requires a mutual agreement among the West African nations because the impacts of reforestation do not recognize political boundaries.     

Internal variability in a regional climate model over West Africa

Sensitivity studies with regional climate models are often performed on the basis of a few simulations for which the difference is analysed and the statistical significance is often taken for granted. In this study we present some simple measures of the confidence limits for these types of experiments by analysing the internal variability of a regional climate model run over West Africa. Two 1-year long simulations, differing only in their initial conditions, are compared. The difference between the two runs gives a measure of the internal variability of the model and an indication of which timescales are reliable for analysis. The results are analysed for a range of timescales and spatial scales, and quantitative measures of the confidence limits for regional model simulations are diagnosed for a selection of study areas for rainfall, low level temperature and wind. As the averaging period or spatial scale is increased, the signal due to internal variability gets smaller and confidence in the simulations increases. This occurs more rapidly for variations in precipitation, which appear essentially random, than for dynamical variables, which show some organisation on larger scales.     

A dataset of future daily weather data for crop modelling over Europe derived from climate change scenarios

Coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (GCMs) simulate different realizations of possible future climates at global scale under contrasting scenarios of land-use and greenhouse gas emissions. Such data require several additional processing steps before it can be used to drive impact models. Spatial downscaling, typically by regional climate models (RCM), and bias-correction are two such steps that have already been addressed for Europe. Yet, the errors in resulting daily meteorological variables may be too large for specific model applications. Crop simulation models are particularly sensitive to these inconsistencies and thus require further processing of GCM-RCM outputs. Moreover, crop models are often run in a stochastic manner by using various plausible weather time series (often generated using stochastic weather generators) to represent climate time scale for a period of interest (e.g. 2000 ± 15 years), while GCM simulations typically provide a single time series for a given emission scenario. To inform agricultural policy-making, data on near- and medium-term decadal time scale is mostly requested, e.g. 2020 or 2030. Taking a sample of multiple years from these unique time series to represent time horizons in the near future is particularly problematic because selecting overlapping years may lead to spurious trends, creating artefacts in the results of the impact model simulations. This paper presents a database of consolidated and coherent future daily weather data for Europe that addresses these problems. Input data consist of daily temperature and precipitation from three dynamically downscaled and bias-corrected regional climate simulations of the IPCC A1B emission scenario created within the ENSEMBLES project. Solar radiation is estimated from temperature based on an auto-calibration procedure. Wind speed and relative air humidity are collected from historical series. From these variables, reference evapotranspiration and vapour pressure deficit are estimated ensuring consistency within daily records. The weather generator ClimGen is then used to create 30 synthetic years of all variables to characterize the time horizons of 2000, 2020 and 2030, which can readily be used for crop modelling studies.     

Climatic change over the Lowveld of South Africa

There has been a 38% decrease in expected annual rainfall totals over the Lowveld, in the eastern part of South Africa, during the last two decades. The downward trend in mean annual rainfall is not replicated in the rest of the summer rainfall region above the escarpment. Rainfall variability over the Lowveld has been increasing since about the 1950s, although the increase in variability appears to have been slowing down in more recent years. Changes in the frequency and intensity of El Niño/Southern Oscillation extreme events are only partly responsible for the observed desiccation and increase in rainfall variability. The CSIRO 9-level general circulation model simulates, for 2 × CO₂ conditions, an insignificant decrease of 10% in the annual mean and a slight increase in the inter-annual variability of rainfall over the Lowveld. Other general circulation models likewise simulate only small changes in annual mean rainfall over the region. However, the simulated increase in rainfall variability by the CSIRO 9-level model is likely to be conservative since the model, being linked to a slab ocean, is unable to represent important features of ocean-atmosphere coupling in the region. Significant changes in the frequencies of extreme drought events and of heavy rains in the Lowveld are likely to occur even with only small changes in the rainfall climatology of the region.     

WRF/ARPEGE-CLIMAT simulated climate trends over West Africa

The Weather Regional Forecast (WRF) model is used in this study to downscale low-resolution data over West Africa. First, the performance of the regional model is estimated through contemporary period experiments (1981?C1990) forced by ARPEGE-CLIMAT GCM output (ARPEGE) and ERA-40 re-analyses. Key features of the West African monsoon circulation are reasonably well represented. WRF atmospheric dynamics and summer rainfall compare better to observations than ARPEGE forcing data. WRF simulated moisture transport over West Africa is also consistent in both structure and variability with re-analyses, emphasizing the substantial role played by the West African Monsoon (WAM) and African Easterly Jet (AEJ) flows. The statistical significance of potential climate changes for the A2 scenario between 2032 and 2041 is enhanced in the downscaling from ARPEGE by the regional experiments, with substantial rainfall increases over the Guinea Gulf and eastern Sahel. Future scenario WRF simulations are characterized by higher temperatures over the eastern Tropical Atlantic suggesting more evaporation available locally. This leads to increased moisture advection towards eastern regions of the Guinea Gulf where rainfall is enhanced through a strengthened WAM flow, supporting surface moisture convergence over West Africa. Warmer conditions over both the Mediterranean region and northeastern Sahel could also participate in enhancing moisture transport within the AEJ. The strengthening of the thermal gradient between the Sahara and Guinean regions, particularly pronounced north of 10°N, would support an intensification of the AEJ northwards, given the dependance of the jet to the position/intensity of the meridional gradient. In turn, mid-tropospheric moisture divergence tends to be favored within the AEJ region supporting southwards deflection of moist air and contributing to deep moist convection over the Sahel where late summer rainfall regimes are sustained in the context of the A2 scenario regional projections. In conclusion, WRF proved to be a valuable and efficient tool to help downscaling GCM projections over West Africa, and thus assessing issues such as water resources vulnerability locally.     

Mesoscale modelling of interactions between rainfall and the land surface in West Africa

Summary Within the joint research project IMPETUS (An integrated approach to the efficient management of scarce water resources in West Africa), the effect of interactions between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere on fresh water availability is investigated. Explorations are conducted for a river catchment in Benin by means of simulations with a non-hydrostatic mesoscale meteorological model. A combination of idealised ensemble simulations with a column version of the model and 3-D modelling of real precipitation events is employed to assess the sensitivity of precipitation to variations in the land surface. Simplified ensemble studies exhibit a dominant influence of initial soil water content and an enhanced dependence of precipitation on vegetation when soil water availability is reduced. For wet soils, the influence of parameters that determine the intensity of near-surface turbulence is dominant. 3-D modelling confirms that these relationships are useful to identify critical land use changes in realistic settings, but do not comprehensively account for the effect of heterogeneous land surface changes on regional precipitation. Instead, the interplay between surface properties, atmospheric dynamics and precipitation systems can generate intrinsic precipitation anomaly patterns that are incongruent with the imposed surface anomalies. Hence, assessments of land use change effects on precipitation for a specific region should be based on an integrated consideration of the interactions between surface processes, atmospheric forcing and precipitation systems. Based on these findings, possible effects of successive land degradation are investigated by sensitivity studies of land surface and rainfall system interaction for the Haute Vallée de l’Ouémé (HVO). In a first series of 3-D model simulations, a successive increase of the surface fraction with adverse conditions for the development of precipitation systems is performed. Within the scope of a second series a successive reduction of surface vegetation and soil water at randomly distributed areas that cover half of the simulation domain is carried out. Basically, a uniform decrease of average precipitation forced by changing conditions and a strong reduction of rainfall in some parts of the HVO are found. As a whole, the results strongly support the hypothesis of a growing risk of rainfall decrease as a result of land use changes. Current affiliation: Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit, Cologne, Germany.     

Annual cycle of the mid-tropospheric easterly jet over West Africa

Summary The paper examines the annual cycle of the mid-tropospheric easterly jet (MTJ) over West Africa against the background of many reviews indicating different locations and characteristics of the jet and considering it as a summer feature. NCEP–NCAR reanalysis zonal wind datasets for the period 1971–2000 and upper air datasets over the region are used. The results exhibit realistic spatial structure of the easterly jet. The long-term mean of the datasets suggests that the jet over West Africa is not only a summer feature but can also be found in winter with the same order of magnitude in the wind velocity at the core. The jet axis is located at about lat. 2° N close to the Guinean Coast in winter and at lat. 14° N in summer. The meridional oscillation of the jet suggests that as it advances northward, it maintains an altitude of 700 hPa in winter and transits in mid-spring to 650 hPa and reaches 600 hPa in summer. In the retreat, it displaces to 650 hPa at the end of September rather sharply to reach 700 hPa in October. The jet’s core has been observed to have a northeast–southwest orientation from season to season, covering a longitude of 29° from its southernmost to the northernmost positions.     

Climatic change in southern Africa: Past and present conditions and possible future scenarios

A brief review of climatic changes over the last 800 000 years in southern Africa is presented. The greatest emphasis is placed on those changes occurring during the Holocene and the period of meteorological record. Twentieth-century rainfall variations and their spatial manifestations are examined, and scenarios of possible future conditions are presented.     

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.     

Assessment of ERA5 and ERA-Interim in Reproducing Mean and Extreme Climates over West Africa

In situ data in West Africa are scarce, and reanalysis datasets could be an alternative source to alleviate the problem of data availability. Nevertheless, because of uncertainties in numerical prediction models and assimilation methods, among other things, existing reanalysis datasets can perform with various degrees of quality and accuracy. Therefore, a proper assessment of their shortcomings and strengths should be performed prior to their usage. In this study, we examine the performance of E...