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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #407715
Research Project: From Field to Watershed: Enhancing Water Quality and Management in Agroecosystems through Remote Sensing, Ground Measurements, and Integrative Modeling

Location: Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory

Title: Responses of precipitation and water vapor budget on the Chinese Loess Plateau to global land cover change forcing

Author
item QIU, L - Jiaotong University
item XUE, Q - Jiaotong University
item WU, Y - Jiaotong University
item Zhang, Xuesong
item WANG, Y - Chinese Academy Of Sciences
item YANG, K - Jiaotong University
item ZHAO, F - Jiaotong University
item YIN, X - Jiaotong University

Submitted to: Journal of Environmental Management
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/23/2024
Publication Date: 6/27/2024
Citation: Qiu, L., Xue, Q., Wu, Y., Zhang, X., Wang, Y., Yang, K., Zhao, F., Yin, X. 2024. Responses of precipitation and water vapor budget on the Chinese Loess Plateau to global land cover change forcing. Journal of Environmental Management. 365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.121588.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.121588

Interpretive Summary: Regional climate conditions (e.g., precipitation) are influenced by both global and regional land use and land cover change (LULCC). However, the role of global land use and land cover change for regional climate has been understudied. In this study, the LULCC forcing experiments within the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) were analyzed to quantify the response of local precipitation in the Loess Plateau, China to global LULCC. The results show that global LULCC has altered water vapor transport in this region, and induced a decrease of 14.08 mm and an increase of 6.44 mm in annual precipitation for 1850-1960 and 1961-2014, respectively. This finding highlights the importance of considering global LULCC in the assessment of future regional climate.

Technical Abstract: Land use and cover change (LULCC) is an important climatic forcing. However, it is challenging to quantify the responses of local precipitation to LULCC forcing due to the complex interaction between the land surface and atmosphere. The ecologically fragile Loess Plateau (LP) of China has experienced evident changes in precipitation patterns, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. The biophysical effects of LULCC on precipitation and the water vapor balance in the LP region were quantified based on the LULCC forcing experiments from the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). We found that the selected 11 Earth system models (ESMs) reproduced the general spatial pattern of annual precipitation on the LP region, with slight overestimation in the southern LP. The multimodel ensemble (MME) average of the 11 ESMs showed that global LULCC forcing exerted a negative effect on long-term mean precipitation in this region during the period of 1850-2014. Notably, a positive effect was detected for the period of 1961-2014, with an increase of 6.4 mm in annual precipitation. This is largely related to the intensified water vapor transport in the four boundaries of the LP region resulting from global LULCC forcing. For example, water vapor influx across the southeastern and northern boundaries of the LP region increased 2-4 kg·s-1·m-1. Furthermore, water vapor balance analysis showed that global LULCC forcing resulted in a divergence in water vapor transport within the LP region, leading to a net water vapor output to the surrounding regions. These findings highlight the importance of considering global LULCC, in addition to regional LULCC, in studying regional climate change and associated impacts on the water cycle.