Abstract
Xinjiang has a serious wind erosion problem due to its fragile ecological condition and sensitivity to climate change. Wind erosion climatic erosivity is a measure of climatic factors influencing wind erosion; evaluating its spatiotemporal variations and relationship with the large-scale circulation pattern can contribute to the understanding of the climate change effect on wind erosion risk. Thus, this study quantified the wind erosion climatic erosivity and examined the connections between climatic erosivity and climate indices using trend analysis, geo-statistical analysis, and cross-wavelet analysis based on the observed daily meteorological data from 64 weather stations in Xinjiang, China during 1969–2019 (50 years). The results indicated that the climatic erosivity showed a significant downward trend at seasonal and annual scales over the past 50 years. Strong seasonality in the C-factor was found, with its highest values in the spring and summer and its lowest values in the winter. The average climatic erosivity was weaker during El Niño events than during La Niña events. The impact of El Niño events on climatic erosivity in Xinjiang continued from the beginning of the event to two months after the end of the events. The La Niña events had a lag effect on the climatic erosivity in Xinjiang, with a lag period of 4 months. From a statistical perspective, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and Arctic Oscillation (AO) indices showed relationships to the climatic erosivity in Xinjiang in terms of their correlation and periodicity. The relationships between the climatic erosivity and ENSO were not clearly positive or negative, with many correlations advanced or delayed in phase. The NAO and AO indices showed a consistent in-phase relationship with climatic erosivity on significant bands, whereas the profound mechanisms involved in this require further study. The results of this study provide a preliminary perspective on the effect of large-scale atmospheric circulation on wind erosion risk in arid and semi-arid regions.
Highlights
Wind erosion is one of the most serious environmental issues in many arid and semi-arid regions of the world, which is the main cause of land degradation and desertification [1,2]
Chepil et al believed that it is the climatic conditions that determine the annual level of soil wind erosion [13], and they proposed an index of wind erosion climatic factors (C-factor) that can represent and reflect the comprehensive effect of climatic conditions on wind erosion to estimate the amount of soil wind erosion under different climatic conditions [14,15]
The results of the analysis showed that the effect of El Niño and La Niña events on the wind erosion climatic erosivity in Xinjiang were different in duration
Summary
Wind erosion is one of the most serious environmental issues in many arid and semi-arid regions of the world, which is the main cause of land degradation and desertification [1,2]. Wind erosion is a complex process that is affected by a large number of factors, including climate conditions, soil properties, land surface characteristics, and land-use practice [4–8]. Among these factors, climatic conditions are considered to be one of the most important driving forces in arid areas [9–11]. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Skidmore revised the model, respectively, introducing the ETP and probability density function of wind speed as parameters of the wind erosion climatic erosivity calculation model [18], which made up for the lack of theoretical basis in Chepil’ s formula and reduced the calculation error in arid and semi-arid regions. The model is widely used in the assessment of wind erosion climatic conditions and response mechanism analysis in arid and semi-arid regions [20,21]
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