An increase in the biogenic aerosol concentration as a contributing factor to the recent wetting trend in Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

A significant wetting trend since the early 1980s in Tibetan Plateau (TP) is most conspicuous in central and eastern Asia as shown in the instrumental data and the long-term moisture sensitive tree rings. We found that anomalies in the large-scale oceanic and atmospheric circulations do not play a significant role on the wetting trend in TP. Meanwhile, the weak correlation between local temperature and precipitation suggests that the temperature-induced enhancement of the local water cycle cannot fully explain the wetting trend either. This may indicate the presence of nonlinear processes between local temperature and precipitation. We hypothesize that the current warming may enhance the emissions of the biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) that can increase the secondary organic aerosols (SOA), contributing to the precipitation increase. The wetting trend can increase the vegetation cover and cause a positive feedback on the BVOC emissions. Our simulations indicate a significant contribution of increased BVOC emissions to the regional organic aerosol mass and the simulated increase in BVOC emissions is significantly correlated with the wetting trend in TP.

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Little change in global drought over the past 60 years.

Justin Sheffield, Eric F. Wood, Michael L. Roderick (2012)

Drought is expected to increase in frequency and severity in the future as a result of climate change, mainly as a consequence of decreases in regional precipitation but also because of increasing evaporation driven by global warming. Previous assessments of historic changes in drought over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries indicate that this may already be happening globally. In particular, calculations of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) show a decrease in moisture globally since the 1970s with a commensurate increase in the area in drought that is attributed, in part, to global warming. The simplicity of the PDSI, which is calculated from a simple water-balance model forced by monthly precipitation and temperature data, makes it an attractive tool in large-scale drought assessments, but may give biased results in the context of climate change. Here we show that the previously reported increase in global drought is overestimated because the PDSI uses a simplified model of potential evaporation that responds only to changes in temperature and thus responds incorrectly to global warming in recent decades. More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years. The results have implications for how we interpret the impact of global warming on the hydrological cycle and its extremes, and may help to explain why palaeoclimate drought reconstructions based on tree-ring data diverge from the PDSI-based drought record in recent years.

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The twentieth century was the wettest period in northern Pakistan over the past millennium.

Kerstin S Treydte, Gerhard Schleser, Gerhard Helle … (2006)

Twentieth-century warming could lead to increases in the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere, altering the hydrological cycle and the characteristics of precipitation. Such changes in the global rate and distribution of precipitation may have a greater direct effect on human well-being and ecosystem dynamics than changes in temperature itself. Despite the co-variability of both of these climate variables, attention in long-term climate reconstruction has mainly concentrated on temperature changes. Here we present an annually resolved oxygen isotope record from tree-rings, providing a millennial-scale reconstruction of precipitation variability in the high mountains of northern Pakistan. The climatic signal originates mainly from winter precipitation, and is robust over ecologically different sites. Centennial-scale variations reveal dry conditions at the beginning of the past millennium and through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with precipitation increasing during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries to yield the wettest conditions of the past 1,000 years. Comparison with other long-term precipitation reconstructions indicates a large-scale intensification of the hydrological cycle coincident with the onset of industrialization and global warming, and the unprecedented amplitude argues for a human role.

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Green-up dates in the Tibetan Plateau have continuously advanced from 1982 to 2011.

Geli Zhang, Yangjian Zhang, Jinwei Dong … (2013)

As the Earth's third pole, the Tibetan Plateau has experienced a pronounced warming in the past decades. Recent studies reported that the start of the vegetation growing season (SOS) in the Plateau showed an advancing trend from 1982 to the late 1990s and a delay from the late 1990s to 2006. However, the findings regarding the SOS delay in the later period have been questioned, and the reasons causing the delay remain unknown. Here we explored the alpine vegetation SOS in the Plateau from 1982 to 2011 by integrating three long-term time-series datasets of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI): Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS, 1982-2006), SPOT VEGETATION (SPOT-VGT, 1998-2011), and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS, 2000-2011). We found GIMMS NDVI in 2001-2006 differed substantially from SPOT-VGT and MODIS NDVIs and may have severe data quality issues in most parts of the western Plateau. By merging GIMMS-based SOSs from 1982 to 2000 with SPOT-VGT-based SOSs from 2001 to 2011 we found the alpine vegetation SOS in the Plateau experienced a continuous advancing trend at a rate of ∼1.04 d·y(-1) from 1982 to 2011, which was consistent with observed warming in springs and winters. The satellite-derived SOSs were proven to be reliable with observed phenology data at 18 sites from 2003 to 2011; however, comparison of their trends was inconclusive due to the limited temporal coverage of the observed data. Longer-term observed data are still needed to validate the phenology trend in the future.

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Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 28 September 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 5

Electronic Location Identifier: 14628

Affiliations

[1 ]Institute of Geography, Key Laboratory of Humid Subtropical Eco-geographical Process (Ministry of Education), College of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University , Fuzhou 350007, China

[2 ]Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100029, China

[3 ]Department of Physics, PO Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland

[4 ]Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100101, China

[5 ]Department of Geosciences and Geography, PO Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland

Author notes

[a ] kfang@ 123456fjnu.edu.cn

Article

Publisher Item ID: srep14628

DOI: 10.1038/srep14628

PMC ID: 4585965

PubMed ID: 26411261

SO-VID: 81af2bfa-738a-499a-8e29-d41229821602

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An increase in the biogenic aerosol concentration as a contributing factor to the recent wetting trend in Tibetan Plateau

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Most cited references 4

Little change in global drought over the past 60 years.

The twentieth century was the wettest period in northern Pakistan over the past millennium.

Green-up dates in the Tibetan Plateau have continuously advanced from 1982 to 2011.

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