Have China’s drylands become wetting in the past 50 years?
Tóm tắt
Recently, whether drylands of Northwest China (NW) have become wetting has been attracting surging attentions. By comparing the Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Indices (SPEI) derived from two different potential evapotranspiration estimates, i.e., the Thornthwaite algorithm (SPEI_th) and the Penman-Monteith equation (SPEI_pm), we try to resolve the controversy. The analysis indicated that air temperature has been warming significantly at a rate of 0.4°C decade−1 in the last five decades and the more arid areas are more prone to becoming warmer. Annual precipitation of the entire study area increased insignificantly by 3.6 mm decade−1 from 1970 to 2019 but NW presented significantly increasing trends. Further, the SPEI_th and SPEI_pm demonstrated similar wetting-drying-wetting trends (three phases) in China’s drylands during 1970–2019. The common periodical signals in the middle phase were identified both by SPEI_th and SPEI_pm wavelet analysis. Analysis with different temporal intervals can lead to divergent or even opposite results. The attribution analysis revealed that precipitation is the main climatic factor driving the drought trend transition. This study hints that the wetting trend’s direction and magnitude hinge on the targeted temporal periods and regions.
Tài liệu tham khảo
Aadhar S, Mishra V, 2020. Increased drought risk in South Asia under warming climate: Implications of uncertainty in potential evapotranspiration estimates. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 21(12): 2979–2996.
Allen R G, Pereira L S, Raes D et al., 1998. Crop Evapotranspiration Guidelines for Computing Crop Water Requirements, FAO Irrigation & Drainage Paper 56, Roma: FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
An C, Feng Z, Barton L, 2006. Dry or humid? Mid-Holocene humidity changes in arid and semi-arid China. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25(3/4): 351–361.
Anderegg W R L, Trugman A T, Badgley G et al., 2020. Divergent forest sensitivity to repeated extreme droughts. Nature Climate Change, 10: 1091–1095.
Beguería S, Vicente-Serrano S M, Reig F et al., 2014. Standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) revisited: Parameter fitting, evapotranspiration models, tools, datasets and drought monitoring. International Journal of Climatology, 34(10): 3001–3023.
Berdugo M, Delgado-Baquerizo M, Soliveres S et al., 2020. Global ecosystem thresholds driven by aridity. Science, 367(6479): 787–790.
Burrell A L, Evans J P, De Kauwe et al., 2020. Anthropogenic climate change has driven over 5 million km2 of drylands towards desertification. Nature Communications, 11: 3853.
Chapin III F S, Chapin M C, Matson PA et al., 2011. Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology. New York: Springer, 57pp.
Chen C, Park T, Wang X et al., 2019. China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management. Nature Sustainability, 2: 122–129.
Chen D, Gao G, Xu C Y et al., 2005. Comparison of the Thornthwaite method and pan data with the standard Penman-Monteith estimates of reference evapotranspiration in China. Climate Research, 28: 123–132.
Chen H, Sun J, 2015. Changes in drought characteristics over China using the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. Journal of Climate, 28(13): 5430–5447.
Chen H, Wang S, Zhu J et al., 2020. Projected changes in abrupt shifts between dry and wet extremes over China through an ensemble of regional climate model simulations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(23): e33894.
Chen T, Zhang H, Chen X et al., 2017. Robust drying and wetting trends found in regions over China based on Köppen climate classifications. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 122(8): 4228–4237.
Cheng G, Wang G, 2006. Changing trend of drought and drought disaster in Northwest China and countermeasures. Earth Science Frontiers, 13(1): 3–14. (in Chinese)
Cheng L, Hoerling M, Aghakouchak A et al., 2016. How has human-induced climate change affected California drought risk? Journal of Climate, 29(1): 111–120.
Cook B I, Smerdon J E, Seager R et al., 2014. Global warming and 21st century drying. Climate Dynamics, 43(11): 2607–2627.
Dilinuer T, Yao J, Chen J et al., 2021. Regional drying and wetting trends over Central Asia based on Köppen climate classification in 1961–2015. Advances in Climate Change Research, 12(3): 363–372.
Feng X, Fu B, Piao S et al., 2016. Revegetation in China’s Loess Plateau is approaching sustainable water resource limits. Nature Climate Change, 6: 1019–1022.
Fu B, Stafford-Smith M, Wang Y et al., 2021. The Global-DEP conceptual framework: Research on dryland ecosystems to promote sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 48: 17–28.
Grinsted A, Moore J C, Jevrejeva S, 2004. Application of the cross wavelet transform and wavelet coherence to geophysical time series. Nonlinear Process in Geophysics, 11: 561–566.
Han J, Wang H, 2007. Interdecadal variability of the East Asian summer monsoon in an AGCM. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 24: 808–818.
Hoffmann D, Gallant A J E, Arblaster J M, 2020. Uncertainties in drought from index and data selection. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(18): e31946.
Hu B, Wang L, Li X et al., 2020. Divergent changes in terrestrial water storage across global arid and humid basins. Geophysical Research Letters, 48(1): e91069.
Hu Z, Chen X, Chen D et al., 2018. “Dry gets drier, wet gets wetter”: A case study over the arid regions of central Asia. International Journal of Climatology, 39(2): 1072–1091.
Huang J, Li Y, Fu C et al., 2017a. Dryland climate change: recent progress and challenges. Reviews of Geophysics, 55(3): 719–778.
Huang J, Yu H, Dai A et al., 2017b. Drylands face potential threat under 2°C global warming target. Nature Climate Change, 7: 417–422.
Jiang P, Ding W, Yuan Y et al., 2020. Diverse response of vegetation growth to multi-time-scale drought under different soil textures in China’s pastoral areas. Journal of Environmental Management, 274(15): 110992.
Jiang Z, Jiang S, Shi Y et al., 2017. Impact of moisture source variation on decadal-scale changes of precipitation in North China from 1951 to 2010. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 122(2): 600–613.
Jiao W, Wang L, Smith W K et al., 2021. Observed increasing water constraint on vegetation growth over the last three decades. Nature Communications, 12(1): 3777.
Li B, Chen Y, Chen Z et al., 2016. Why does precipitation in northwest China show a significant increasing trend from 1960 to 2010?. Atmospheric Research, 167: 275–284.
Li B, Chen Y, Shi X, 2012. Why does the temperature rise faster in the arid region of northwest China?. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 117: D16115.
Li L, She D, Zheng H et al., 2020. Elucidating diverse drought characteristics from two meteorological drought indices (SPI and SPEI) in China. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 21(7): 1513–1530.
Li Y, Huang J, Ji M et al., 2015. Dryland expansion in northern China from 1948 to 2008. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 32(6): 870–876.
Lian X, Piao S, Chen A et al., 2021. Multifaceted characteristics of dryland aridity changes in a warming world. Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, 2: 232–250.
Liu L, Wang Y, You, N et al., 2018. Changes in aridity and its driving factors in China during 1961–2016. International Journal of Climatology, 39(1): 50–60.
Liu Y, Kumar M, Katul G G et al., 2019. Reduced resilience as an early warning signal of forest mortality. Nature Climate Change, 9: 880–885.
Lobell D B, Deines J M, Tommaso S Di, 2020. Changes in the drought sensitivity of US maize yields. Nature Food, 1: 729–735.
Masson-Delmotte V, Zhai P, Pirani A et al., 2021. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/srcc.
Mckee T B, Doesken N J, Kleist J, 1993. The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Anaheim: 8th Conference on Applied Climatology.
Milton Abramowitz, Irene A Stegun, 1965. Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables (Dover Books on Mathematics). New York: Dover Publications Inc.
Neelin J D, Chou C, Su H, 2003. Tropical drought regions in global warming and El Niño teleconnections. Geophysical Research Letters, 30(24): D2275.
Palmer W C, 1965. Meteorological Drought. U.S. Weather Bur. Res. Pap. No.45.
Peng D, Zhou T, 2017. Why was the arid and semiarid northwest China getting wetter in the recent decades?. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 122(17): 9060–9075.
Peng J, Wu C, Zhang X et al., 2019. Satellite detection of cumulative and lagged effects of drought on autumn leaf senescence over the Northern Hemisphere. Global Change Biology, 25(6): 2174–2188.
Qin J, Su B, Tao H et al., 2021. Spatio-temporal variations of dryness/wetness over Northwest China under different SSPs-RCPs. Atmospheric Research, 259: 105672.
Ren G, Yuan Y, Liu Y et al., 2016. Changes in precipitation over Northwest China. Arid Zone Research, 33: 1–19. (in Chinese)
Shi Y, Shen Y, Li D et al., 2003. Discussion on the present climate change from warm-dry to warm-wet in Northwest China. Quaternary Sciences, 23(2): 152–164.
Slette I J, Post A K, Awad M et al., 2019. How ecologists define drought, and why we should do better. Global Change Biology, 25(10): 3193–3200.
Song Y, M J, Zuo Q et al., 2021. Analysis on characteristics of dry-wet variation on multi-time scale in Xinjiang. Water Resources Protection, 37(2): 43–48. (in Chinese)
Su L, Miao C, Duan Q et al., 2019. Multiple-wavelet coherence of world’s large rivers with meteorological factors and ocean signals. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124(9): 4932–4954.
Sun S, Chen H, Wang G et al., 2016. Shift in potential evapotranspiration and its implications for dryness/wetness over Southwest China. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 121(16): 9342–9355.
Tao H, Borth H, Fraedrich K et al., 2014. Drought and wetness variability in the Tarim River Basin and connection to large-scale atmospheric circulation. International Journal of Climatology, 34(8): 2678–2684.
Thornthwaite C W, 1948. An approach toward a rational classification of climate. Geographical Review, 38: 55–94.
Toms J D, Lesperance M L, 2003. Piecewise regression: A tool for identifying ecological thresholds. Ecology, 84(8): 2034–2041.
Trenberth K E, Dai A, van der Schrier G et al., 2014. Global warming and changes in drought. Nature Climate Change, 4: 17–22.
United Nations (UN), 2015. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations General Assembly. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/progress-report/.
Vicente-Serrano S M, Beguería S, López-Moreno J I, 2010. A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. Journal of Climate, 23(7): 1696–1718.
Wang H, 2002. The instability of the East Asian summer monsoon-ENSO relations. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 19: 1–11.
Wang J, Feng J, Yan Z et al., 2020. An analysis of the urbanization contribution to observed terrestrial stilling in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China. Environmental Research Letters, 15(3): D34062.
Wang Q, Zhai P, Qin D, 2020. New perspectives on ‘warming-wetting’ trend in Xinjiang, China. Advances in Climate Change Research, 11(3): 252–260.
Wang Y, Fu B, Liu Y et al., 2021. Response of vegetation to drought in the Tibetan Plateau: Elevation differentiation and the dominant factors. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 306(15): 108468.
Wei L, Jiang S, Ren L et al., 2021. Evaluation of seventeen satellite-, reanalysis-, and gauge-based precipitation products for drought monitoring across mainland of China. Atmospheric Research, 263(1): 105813.
West H, Quinn N, Horswell M, 2019. Remote sensing for drought monitoring & impact assessment: Progress, past challenges and future opportunities. Remote Sensing of Environment, 232: 111291.
Wilhite D A, Glantz M H, 1987. Understanding the drought phenomenon: The role of definitions. Water International, 10(3): 111–120.
World Meteorological Organization, 2020. WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 2019. In: Organización Mundial de la Meteorología, 1248: 44pp.
Xu H, Wang X, Zhao C, 2021. Drought sensitivity of vegetation photosynthesis along the aridity gradient in northern China. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 102: 102418.
Xu H, Wang X, Zhao C et al., 2020. Assessing the response of vegetation photosynthesis to meteorological drought across northern China. Land Degradation and Development, 32(1): 20–34.
Yao J, Chen Y, Guan X et al., 2022. Recent climate and hydrological changes in a mountain-basin system in Xinjiang, China. Earth-Science Reviews, 226: 103957.
Yao N, Li Y, Dong Q et al., 2019. Influence of the accuracy of reference crop evapotranspiration on drought monitoring using standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index in mainland of China. Land Degradation and Development, 31(2): 266–282.
Yao Y, Liu Y, Wang Y et al., 2021. Greater increases in China’s dryland ecosystem vulnerability in drier conditions than in wetter conditions. Journal of Environmental Management, 291: 112689.
Yu Y, Wang J, Li Q, 2003. Spatial and temporal distribution of water vapor and its variation trend in atmosphere over Northwest China. Journal of Glaciology and Geocryology, 25(2): 149–156. (in Chinese)
Zang C, Buras A, Esquivel-Muelbert A et al., 2020. Standardized drought indices in ecological research: Why one size does not fit all. Global Change Biology, 26(2): 322–324.
Zeng Z, Piao S, Li L Z X et al., 2018. Global terrestrial stilling: Does Earth’s greening play a role?. Environmental Research Letters, 13: 124013.
Zhang J, Sun F, Xu J et al., 2016. Dependence of trends in and sensitivity of drought over China (1961–2013) on potential evaporation model. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(1): 206–213.
Zhao H, Yao J, Li X et al., 2020. The characteristic of climate change in Xinjiang during 1961–2015. Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis Sunyatseni, 59(5): 126–133. (in Chinese)
Zhao W, 2020. Extreme weather and climate events in China under changing climate. National Science Review, 7(5): 938–943.
Zhou J, Wang Y, Su, B et al., 2020. Choice of potential evapotranspiration formulas influences drought assessment: A case study in China. Atmospheric Research, 242: 104979.