Abstract
The evolution of regional arid/humid patterns caused by global climate change deserves attention. We investigated the changes in the area of arid/humid climate regions over Asia under the aegis of national-committed emission reductions to comply with the Paris Agreement using an ensemble of 17 global climate models (GCMs) from the Fifth Coupled Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) archives. Our results indicated an overall trend towards aridity in a future warmer climate based on an aridity index (AI), defined as the ratio of precipitation to potential evapotranspiration (PET). In the future, the humid region will contract and the arid region and arid/humid transition zones will expand. Compared with the present period, arid/humid region switch is projected to occur in a land area of 2512.8 × 103 km2 over Asia under the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC)-pledge scenario. If global warming is controlled to the ambitious 2.0 °C and 1.5 °C scenarios instead of that of the INDC-pledge scenario, a decrease in the changes in the area of arid/humid regions by more than half would be expected. In addition, the arid/humid regions with continuous global warming are estimated to contract/expand greatly. Changes in the spatial pattern of the arid/humid zones over Asia show strong similarities between multi-model simulations, although there are some differences in detail.
Highlights
According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global mean temperature increased 0.85 °C (0.65–1.06 °C) between 1880 and 2012, and a larger increase is projected in the future (IPCC 2014)
We examined the trend in hydroclimatic variables using the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) emission reduction scenarios for the few decades and investigated the changes in arid/ humid regions using observational climatology and an ensemble of comprehensive global climate models (GCMs) from the Fifth Coupled Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5)
We quantified the change in the regional arid/humid pattern based on the self-determined emission reduction commitments, which are the current national mitigation commitments negotiated by governments
Summary
According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global mean temperature increased 0.85 °C (0.65–1.06 °C) between 1880 and 2012, and a larger increase is projected in the future (IPCC 2014). Changes in regional aridity are among the primary effects anticipated under global warming (Dai 2012, Trenberth et al 2013, Greve and Seneviratne 2015). Projected changes in temperature and precipitation will cause shifts in arid/humid climate zones worldwide (Hanf et al 2012, Feng et al 2014, Rohli et al 2015). To what extent future climate change will affect arid/humid regions in Asia is unknown and differs among regions
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