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Emphasizing the land use-cloud-radiation feedback in detecting climate effects of land use and land cover changes

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Abstract

Previous assessments on climate effects of land use and land cover changes (LUCC) mostly focused on the altered surface upward shortwave radiation flux due to changes in surface albedo. However, the explorer on the physical mechanism using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with subgrid scale process precisely described here revealed that the LUCC impacts could not be directly interpreted by surface albedo changes only. The land use-cloud-radiation feedback, within which cloud amount and cloud ceiling, large-scale circulation related moisture flux and local evaporation were altered, played an essential role in affecting surface energy and water budgets between land surface and the atmosphere, especially for the impacted downward shortwave radiation flux. With subgrid scale process considered in describing LUCC and the land use-cloud-radiation feedback emphasized, LUCC impacts on surface air temperature (SAT), precipitation and near-surface wind speed (NSWS) were explored, which displayed marked temporal and spatial characteristics. The LUCC climate effects for both the influenced terrestrial subregions and the intensity were larger over summertime, expressing marked affection on the East Asian Summer Monsoon system. The LUCC impacts on SAT and NSWS mainly presented as changes in mean state, whereas the influences on the precipitation principally displayed as changes in the variability. LUCC induced changes in the averaged SAT, precipitation and NSWS were small, whereas the nearly symmetric distributions between positive and negative changes, which contributed to total changes, were much larger and might have a considerable impact on local and regional climate, especially on extreme climate events.

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Data Availability

CRU surface air temperature data are available at https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/89e1e34ec3554dc98594a5732622bce9. GPCC precipitation data can be found at https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/GPCC/html/fulldata-monthly_v2020_doi_download.html. NCEP FNL datasets can be downloaded at https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.2/. Land use data in the 1980 and 2010 s are available to readers upon request.

Codes availability

Computer codes adopted in the data processing and analysis were written in FORTRAN language. All types of figures appear in this manuscript were drawn with Grads (http://cola.gmu.edu/grads/downloads.php) or Origin (https://www.originlab.com/origin). More specific codes in this manuscript are available to readers upon request

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. 41775087, 42141017 and 41875178, National Key R&D Program of China under grant no. 2018YFA0606004, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (no. 2019M660761), the Program for Special Research Assistant Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climatic Change.

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  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Regional Climate and Environment for Temperate East Asia, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Deming Zhao & Jinlin Zha

  2. Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment and Department of Atmospheric Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Jinlin Zha & Jian Wu

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  1. Deming Zhao
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  2. Jinlin Zha
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Contributions

D ZHAO designed numerical experiments, performed the analysis and wrote the main manuscript. J ZHA performed analysis on the near-surface wind speed. J Wu participated in the analysis and revision of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussions, read and approved the final manuscript.

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Zhao, D., Zha, J. & Wu, J. Emphasizing the land use-cloud-radiation feedback in detecting climate effects of land use and land cover changes. Clim Dyn 62, 955–972 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06959-5

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