Cropland Exposed to Drought Is Overestimated without Considering the CO 2 Effect in the Arid Climatic Region of China

Shan Jiang, Jian Zhou, Guojie Wang, Qigen Lin, Ziyan Chen, Yanjun Wang and Buda Su
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Shan Jiang: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Jian Zhou: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Guojie Wang: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Qigen Lin: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Ziyan Chen: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Yanjun Wang: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Buda Su: Collaboration Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Institute for Disaster Risk Management, School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science &Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 6, 1-21

Abstract: Drought seriously restricts people’s lives and social–economic development. An accurate understanding of the evolution of drought characteristics and future changes in cultivated land exposure can reduce the risk of drought. There is evidence that increased CO 2 concentrations alter the physiological properties of vegetation and, thus, affect drought evolution. In this study, both changes and differences in drought (i.e., characteristics and cropland exposure) with and without the CO 2 effect over the arid region of China are investigated, using seven CMIP6 outputs and land-use under seven shared-socioeconomic-pathway (SSP)-based scenarios. The results show that: (1) drier conditions will be more severe in 2015–2100 under SSP5-8.5, especially if the CO 2 effect is neglected. Moreover, the CO 2 effect will increase with increasing emission concentrations; (2) drought intensity will be greater than in the baseline period (1995–2014, approximately −1.45) but weaker than that without the CO 2 effect under all scenarios; (3) drought frequency will decrease, and will generally decline faster if the CO 2 effect is not considered; (4) drought duration will increase and the difference between the presence and absence of the CO 2 effect will always be smallest under SSP1-1.9 and largest under SSP5-8.5; (5) drought acreage will also increase, and neglecting the CO 2 effect is always higher than that considering CO 2 . The difference between the two algorithms will increase with time; and (6) cropland exposure to drought will increase, and can even reach 669,000 km 2 and 524,000 km 2 considering and ignoring the CO 2 effect, respectively. Our findings suggest that ignoring CO 2 in drought evaluations will result in significant overestimations of drought projections.

Keywords: drought; potential evapotranspiration; CO 2 effect; cropland exposure; arid region (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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