Abstract
Forest vegetation can affect the climate and weather patterns in multiple ways. What are the main mechanisms of such influence and how the land-use and vegetation changes may affect the weather and climate conditions in different geographical regions are still not quite clear. In our study, the possible impact of land use and forest cover changes in the central part of the East European plain on regional meteorological conditions was investigated using the regional COSMO model. In our modeling experiments we used two extreme land-use change scenarios imitating total deforestation and afforestation of experimental area located between 55° and 59oN and 28° and 37°E in the central part of the East European plain. Modeling results conducted for the year 2016 showed that deforestation results in increase of the temperature difference between summer and winter months by up to 0.6oС and in reduction of the annual precipitation by 35 mm. On the contrary, afforestation leads to decrease of the annual temperature range by 0.3° С and to growth of annual precipitation by 15 mm. Moreover, the deforestation results in higher frequencies of stronger winds and lower number of fog events, while the afforestation leads to opposite effects. Analysis of the Khromov and Gorchinsky indexes of continentality showed that the deforestation of the selected experimental area may lead to increase of the climate continentality in the study region, whereas the afforestation results in milder climate conditions.
Highlights
There are numerous factors and multiple pathways that control the interaction of forest vegetation and the atmosphere at various temporal and spatial scales
To derive the possible effects of forest cover changes on regional weather conditions we considered the possible changes of wind speed pattern and the frequency of high wind speeds due to deforestation and afforestation taking into account their significant influence on regional agriculture, forestry and population
It was shown that deforestation results in decrease of the air temperature in cold half of the year and in increase – in summer time
Summary
There are numerous factors and multiple pathways that control the interaction of forest vegetation and the atmosphere at various temporal and spatial scales. Any forest disturbances can influence surface albedo, net radiation, sensible and latent heat, and CO2 fluxes between the land surface and atmosphere, and can substantially affect climate conditions from local to global scales (Kulmala et al 2014; Seidl et al 2014; Mamkin et al 2019) These feedback mechanisms were investigated over the last decades in many experimental and modeling studies (Nobre et al 1991; Bonan et al 1992; Carlson and Groot 1997; Pielke et al 2007; Olchev et al 2009; Brovkin et al 2009; Anav et al 2010; Bathiany et al 2010; Kulmala et al 2014; Mamkin et al 2016, 2019). The main goal of the study is to derive the possible impact of land use and forest cover changes in the central part of the East European plain on regional meteorological conditions using the regional weather forecast COSMO model
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