Abstract
This study revealed the influence of the oasis effect on summer temperatures based on MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) and meteorological data. The results showed that the oasis effect occurs primarily in the summer. For a single oasis, the maximum oasis cold island intensity based on LST (OCILST) was 3.82 °C and the minimum value was 2.32 °C. In terms of the annual change in OCILST, the mean value of all oases ranged from 2.47 °C to 3.56 °C from 2001 to 2013. Net radiation (Rn) can be used as a key predictor of OCILST and OCItemperature (OCI based on air temperature). On this basis, we reconstructed a long time series (1961–2014) of OCItemperature and Tbase(air temperature without the disturbance of oasis effect). Our results indicated that the reason for the increase in the observed temperatures was the significant decrease in the OCItemperature over the past 50 years. In arid regions, the data recorded in weather stations not only underestimated the mean temperature of the entire study area but also overestimated the increasing trend of the temperature. These discrepancies are due to the limitations in the spatial distribution of weather stations and the disturbance caused by the oasis effect.
Highlights
An oasis is a type of medium-sized or small-sized non-zonal landscape that occurs in dry climates and is supported by natural or artificial rivers in deserts[1,2]
In the Tarim Basin, there are a total of 43 weather stations, but only one station is located in the desert and four stations are distributed in the mountainous area, and the other 39 stations are distributed
The results indicate that, for a single oasis, the maximum value of the multi-year average OCILST was 3.82 °C, which occurred in the Bosten oases, whereas the minimum OCILST was 2.32 °C, which occurred in the Kongque oasis from 2001 to 2013
Summary
An oasis is a type of medium-sized or small-sized non-zonal landscape that occurs in dry climates and is supported by natural or artificial rivers in deserts[1,2]. Several subsequent studies have indicated that the oasis effect is a ubiquitous phenomenon in arid regions, including Northwest china and Southern Israel[2,8,9,10,11,12]. Several studies suggest that, during the past 60 years, the temperature rise was 0.32–0.36 °C/decade and 0.1– 0.3 °C/decade in the arid regions of Northwest China and in the Tarim Basin, respectively[19,20]. The temperature rise in the arid region of Northwest China, which includes the Tarim Basin, can generally be attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)[20], the Siberian High[22], the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) or the Arctic Oscillation (AO)[23,24]. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to X.H. (email: haoxm@ ms.xjb.ac.cn) www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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