M. G. Zhao

The impact of land cover change on the atmospheric circulation

Abstract The NCAR Community Climate Model (version 3), coupled to the Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer scheme and a mixed layer ocean model is used to investigate the impact on the climate of a conservative change from natural to present land cover. Natural vegetation cover was obtained from an ecophysiologically constrained biome model. The current vegetation cover was obtained by perturbing the natural cover from forest to grass over areas where land cover has been observed to change. Simulations were performed for 17 years for each case (results from the last 15 years are presented here). We find that land cover changes, largely constrained to the tropics, SE Asia, North America and Europe, cause statistically significant changes in regional temperature and precipitation but cause no impact on the globally averaged temperature or precipitation. The perturbation in land cover in the tropics and SE Asia teleconnect to higher latitudes by changing the position and strength of key elements of the general circulation (the Hadley and Walker circulations). Many of the areas where statistically significant changes occur are remote from the location of land cover change. Historical land cover change is not typically included in transitory climate simulations, and it may be that the simulation of the patterns of temperature change over the twentieth century by climate models will be further improved by taking it into account.

Recent Climate-Driven Increases in Vegetation Productivity for the Western Arctic: Evidence of an Acceleration of the Northern Terrestrial Carbon Cycle

Abstract Northern ecosystems contain much of the global reservoir of terrestrial carbon that is potentially reactive in the context of near-term climate change. Annual variability and recent trends in vegetation productivity across Alaska and northwest Canada were assessed using a satellite remote sensing–based production efficiency model and prognostic simulations of the terrestrial carbon cycle from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM) and BIOME–BGC (BioGeoChemical Cycles) model. Evidence of a small, but widespread, positive trend in vegetation gross and net primary production (GPP and NPP) is found for the region from 1982 to 2000, coinciding with summer warming of more than 1.8°C and subsequent relaxation of cold temperature constraints to plant growth. Prognostic model simulation results were generally consistent with the remote sensing record and also indicated that an increase in soil decomposition and plant-available nitrogen with regional warming was partially responsible for the positive produc...

The relative impact of observed change in land cover and carbon dioxide as simulated by a climate model

The relative impact on temperature of a change in land use compared to a change in carbon dioxide was investigated using the Community Climate Model. We performed two 17 year equilibrium simulations, one using an estimate of natural land use at carbon dioxide levels of 280 ppmv, and a second simulation using an estimate of current land use. An identical pair of experiments, but at 355 ppmv, were also performed. Regionally, land use change causes air temperature changes of 50% to 100% of the size induced by the carbon dioxide perturbation although globally averaged the effect of land use change is negligible. The regional impacts of land cover change provides an avenue for improving modeling efforts to simulate recent global change. Including land cover change in transitory simulations may make detecting human-induced climate change easier by permitting a more accurate simulation of regional patterns of change across the Northern Hemisphere.

Relative climatic effects of landcover change and elevated carbon dioxide combined with aerosols: A comparison of model results and observations

In this study we examine the possibility that the historical total of human landcover changes have had a comparable effect on climate to that of historical increases in CO2 and aerosols. We compared results from two coupled climate model simulations which investigated transient climate changes produced by observed historical changes of CO2 combined with sulfate aerosol forcing with two other climate model simulations that examined the equilibrium climatic effects of currently observed changes in landcover from its natural state. We found that simulated, near-surface temperature anomalies due to transient increases in atmospheric CO2 combined with aerosols at the level currently observed are of similar amplitude as simulated temperature anomalies due to the direct and remote (nonlocal) equilibrium effects of historical anthropogenic landcover change in all models. Both effects are of comparable amplitude to observed temperature trends in the past 2 decades, the period of largest global surface warming. These results provide evidence for a confounding influence on surface temperatures and may be an indication that the problem of detection of the radiative warming effect of increased CO2 in the observational record may be more complicated than previously appreciated.

Uncertainty in the simulation of runoff due to the parameterization of frozen soil moisture using the Global Soil Wetness Project methodology

Four simulations of the region 30°N–90°N are performed using the Global Soil Wetness Project methodology and a single land surface scheme. Four methods are used to represent soil ice: an explicit representation of the thermal and hydrological effects of soil ice; two implicit methods (which only account for the hydrological effects); and finally the simplest approach where soil ice is not accounted for. Substantial impacts on total runoff, evaporation and temperature result from the choice of parameterization. The partitioning of total runoff between drainage and surface runoff is also changed. The impacts on temperature are large enough to cause problems for “fingerprinting” of global change while the change in the runoff generation process, and the timing of maximum runoff are large enough to concern ocean modelers. Evidence presented here and elsewhere indicates that land surface schemes should include the thermal effects of soil ice melting and freezing. However, the hydrological effects of soil ice suppressing infiltration and encouraging surface runoff may be based on observations taken at a scale inappropriate to climate model parameterization. We show that for one basin, the Mackenzie, a land surface model which ignores soil ice entirely simulates runoff better than the other methodologies tested here. We therefore hypothesize that it may be preferable to not include soil ice in the runoff formulations used in land surface models until we have more observations at an appropriate spatial scale. Testing of frozen soil moisture parameterizations in other catchments with high-quality observed runoff data should be conducted to test this hypothesis.

The Relative Impact of Regional Scale Land Cover Change and Increasing CO2 over China

A series of 17-yr equilibrium simulations using the NCAR CCM3 (T42 resolution) were performed to investigate the regional scale impacts of land cover change and increasing CO2 over China. Simulations with natural and current land cover at CO2 levels of 280, 355, 430, and 505 ppmv were conducted. Results show statistically significant changes in major climate fields (e.g. temperature and surface wind speed) on a 15-yr average following land cover change. We also found increases in the maximum temperature and in the diurnal temperature range due to land cover change. Increases in CO2 affect both the maximum and minimum temperature so that changes in the diurnal range are small. Both land cover change and CO2 change also impact the frequency distribution of precipitation with increasing CO2 tending to lead to more intense precipitation and land cover change leading to less intense precipitation—indeed, the impact of land cover change typically had the opposite effect versus the impacts of CO2. Our results provide support for the inclusion of future land cover change scenarios in long-term transitory climate modelling experiments of the 21st Century. Our results also support the inclusion of land surface models that can represent future land cover changes resulting from an ecological response to natural climate variability or increasing CO2. Overall, we show that land cover change can have a significant impact on the regional scale climate of China, and that regionally, this impact is of a similar magnitude to increases in CO2 of up to about 430 ppmv. This means that that the impact of land cover change must be accounted for in detection and attribution studies over China.