aridity
; benchmarking
; data set
; environmental assessment
; evaporation
; global change
; hydrological change
; hydrological cycle
; land surface
; regional climate
; socioeconomic impact
; trend analysis
英文摘要:
Changesinthe hydrological conditions of the land surface have substantial impacts on society1,2. Yet assessments of observed continental dryness trends yield contradicting results3-7. The concept that dry regions dry out further, whereas wet regions become wetter as the climate warms has been proposed as a simplified summary of expected8-10 as well as observed10-14 changes over land, although this concept is mostly based on oceanic data8,10. Here we present an analysis of more than 300 combinations of various hydrological data sets of historical land dryness changes covering the period from 1948 to 2005. Each combination of data sets is benchmarked against an empirical relationship between evaporation, precipitation and aridity. Those combinations that perform well are used for trend analysis. We find that over about three-quarters of the global land area, robust dryness changes cannot be detected. Only 10.8% of the global land area shows a robust 'dry gets drier, wet gets wetter' pattern, compared to 9.5% of global land area with the opposite pattern, that is, dry gets wetter, and wet gets drier. We conclude that aridity changes over land, where the potential for direct socio-economic consequences is highest, have not followed a simple intensification of existing patterns.
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Universitaetsstrasse 16, Zurich, Switzerland; Center for Climate Systems Modeling (C2SM), ETH Zurich, Universitaetsstrasse 16, Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States; Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany; Climate Research Division, Environment Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada
Recommended Citation:
Greve P.,Orlowsky B.,Mueller B.,et al. Global assessment of trends in wetting and drying over land[J]. Nature Geoscience,2014-01-01,7(10)