The impact of anthropogenic land use and land cover change on regional climate extremes

Kirsten L. Findell (), Alexis Berg, Pierre Gentine, John P. Krasting, Benjamin R. Lintner, Sergey Malyshev, Joseph A. Santanello and Elena Shevliakova
Additional contact information
Kirsten L. Findell: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Alexis Berg: Princeton University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Pierre Gentine: Columbia University, Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering
John P. Krasting: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Benjamin R. Lintner: Rutgers University, Dept. of Environmental Sciences
Sergey Malyshev: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Joseph A. Santanello: NASA GSFC Hydrological Sciences Branch
Elena Shevliakova: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Land surface processes modulate the severity of heat waves, droughts, and other extreme events. However, models show contrasting effects of land surface changes on extreme temperatures. Here, we use an earth system model from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to investigate regional impacts of land use and land cover change on combined extremes of temperature and humidity, namely aridity and moist enthalpy, quantities central to human physiological experience of near-surface climate. The model’s near-surface temperature response to deforestation is consistent with recent observations, and conversion of mid-latitude natural forests to cropland and pastures is accompanied by an increase in the occurrence of hot-dry summers from once-in-a-decade to every 2–3 years. In the tropics, long time-scale oceanic variability precludes determination of how much of a small, but significant, increase in moist enthalpy throughout the year stems from the model’s novel representation of historical patterns of wood harvesting, shifting cultivation, and regrowth of secondary vegetation and how much is forced by internal variability within the tropical oceans.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01038-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-01038-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01038-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().