Abstract
This study focuses on the potential impacts of large-scale land use and land cover changes (LUCC) on surface temperature from a global perspective. As important types of LUCC, urbanization, deforestation, cultivated land reclamation, and grassland degradation have effects on the climate, the potential changes of the surface temperature caused by these four types of large-scale LUCC from 2010 to 2050 are downscaled, and this issue analyzed worldwide along with Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The first case study presents some evidence of the effects of future urbanization on surface temperature in the Northeast megalopolis of the United States of America (USA). In order to understand the potential climatological variability caused by future forest deforestation and vulnerability, we chose Brazilian Amazon region as the second case study. The third selected region in India as a typical region of cultivated land reclamation where the possible climatic impacts are explored. In the fourth case study, we simulate the surface temperature changes caused by future grassland degradation in Mongolia. Results show that the temperature in built-up area would increase obviously throughout the four land types. In addition, the effects of all four large-scale LUCC on monthly average temperature change would vary from month to month with obviously spatial heterogeneity.
Highlights
Land use and cover changes (LUCC) is widely recognized as one of major contributors to global climate changes [1,2,3]
The results show that the influenced area by future urbanization on monthly average temperature would be getting larger in the period from July to December
For the case study in urbanization in United States of America (USA), the land cover change is just characterized by urban expansion, and in the case of grassland degradation in Mongolia, the main land change progress is just the grassland degraded to Barren or Sparsely Vegetated land
Summary
Land use and cover changes (LUCC) is widely recognized as one of major contributors to global climate changes [1,2,3]. In addition to the research on the small scale, such as a single city, there is evidence that the impacts of urbanization on climate change are significant at a regional scale. LUCCs have effect on the characteristics of regional climate system in different ways, especially the changes of temperature and precipitation [9,10,35]. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, as the latest-generation numerical weather prediction model [36,37,38], is used as an important tool to quantitatively analyze and compare the possible impacts of the future land use changes of different regions on the regional climate.
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