Abstract
This study investigates the potential changes in surface energy budget components under certain future climate conditions over the Alps and Northern Italy. The regional climate scenarios are obtained though the Regional Climate Model version 3 (RegCM3) runs, based on a reference climate (1961–1990) and the future climate (2071–2100) via the A2 and B2 scenarios. The energy budget components are calculated by employing the University of Torino model of land Processes Interaction with Atmosphere (UTOPIA), and using the RegCM3 outputs as input data. Our results depict a significant change in the energy budget components during springtime over high-mountain areas, whereas the most relevant difference over the plain areas is the increase in latent heat flux and hence, evapotranspiration during summertime. The precedence of snow-melting season over the Alps is evidenced by the earlier increase in sensible heat flux. The annual mean number of warm and cold days is evaluated by analyzing the top-layer soil temperature and shows a large increment (slight reduction) of warm (cold) days. These changes at the end of this century could influence the regional radiative properties and energy cycles and thus, exert significant impacts on human life and general infrastructures.
Highlights
In recent years, the scientific community has recognized the importance of the land surface as a key component of the climate system [1,2,3]
Our results indicate that all of the energy budget components in the high mountains in future climate (FC) are strongly controlled with the variation in ∆SN; their behaviors are quite different for different seasonal periods of negative ∆SN
This study investigated the variations in the energy budget and soil temperature under future climate conditions over the Alps and Northern Italy
Summary
The scientific community has recognized the importance of the land surface as a key component of the climate system [1,2,3]. The soil can be considered a lower boundary condition for the atmosphere, being a source term for the hydrologic and energy budgets in the atmospheric surface layer. Different conditions of some crucial parameters, such as the soil moisture and temperature, can affect the stability of the boundary layer and, generally, of the whole troposphere. The soil acts in two ways in the climate system. On one hand, it partitions the incoming net radiation (NR) into sensible heat flux (SHF) and latent heat flux (LHF) to the atmosphere and conductive heat flux (CHF) to the underground soil. It redistributes the income of water from precipitation into evapotranspiration (ET), surface or underground storage, runoff or gravitational drainage. Being proportional to ET, LHF is a key variable that links energy and hydrologic exchanges
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