Late 21st Research Articles

Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau Permafrost at Risk in the Late 21st Century

AbstractGlobal warming has led to permafrost degradation worldwide. The Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP) hosts most of the world's alpine permafrost, yet its impending changes remain largely unclear, thereby affecting regional hydrological and ecological processes and the global carbon budget. By employing a land surface model adapted to simulate frozen ground, and using state‐of‐the‐art multi‐model and multi‐scenario data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6, changes in permafrost distribution and its thermal regimes on the QTP are systematically predicted under various shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). Projections for SSP2‐4.5, SSP3‐7.0, and SSP5‐8.5 show that most of the continuous permafrost region of the QTP will persist through 2050. Much of the permafrost is likely to degrade in the late 21st century, with projected area losses of 44 ± 4%, 59 ± 5%, and 71 ± 7%, respectively, by 2100. In particular, the Three Rivers Source region in the central eastern part of the QTP is a key area of permafrost degradation, where permafrost is most vulnerable and degradation occurs earliest. The mean annual ground temperature of QTP permafrost will increase by 0.8 ± 0.2°C, 2.0 ± 0.3°C, and 2.6 ± 0.3°C under SSP2‐4.5, SSP3‐7.0, and SSP5‐8.5, respectively, and the active layer thickness will increase by 0.7 ± 0.1 m, 1.5 ± 0.3 m, and 3.0 ± 1.0 m, respectively. The surviving permafrost under SSP3‐7.0 and SSP5‐8.5 will be thermally unstable, which is a clear warning sign of complete disappearance. The analysis of permafrost sensitivity to climate change signifies that alpine permafrost on the QTP has low resilience to climate change, in contrast to permafrost in pan‐Artic high latitudes.

Круглый стол «Эстетика советской кинокомедии». Эксцентрика, авторское начало, официозный контекст

In the modern period the aesthetics of comedy in cinema was on the periphery of the attention of the science of art. Not least, this was due to the fact that the analysis of the comic was relegated to the background by the study of the playful relativity characteristic of postmodern trends in the screen arts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Meanwhile, Soviet film comedy remains one of the pinnacles in the development of this genre in the cinema of the 20th century. And the decline of comedy in modern Russian cinema prompts a return to the experience of the masterpieces of the Soviet era. The relevance of the topic is connected with this: the contexts of the comic and laughter in Soviet comedies, their functions of a social, communicative, aesthetic nature were not studied in detail and comprehensively in their time. The novelty of approaches today is associated with the possibility of free from ideological pressure and the most detailed consideration, and in part are vision of the formal and substantive features of the film comedy of the Soviet period. This scientific process combines the methods of art history, cultural studies, folklore and anthropology. This text reviews the reports at the Round Table “Aesthetics of Soviet Film Comedy”, organized by the Mass Media Arts Department of the State Institute for Art Studies and which brought together scientists of different generations from VGIK, the Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation, the Russian State University for the Humanities, the Higher School of Economics, the Academy of the Media Industry, the Free University and other institutions. The purpose of the round table was to identify the main phases of the evolution of comedy in the Soviet cinema, and therefore the order of the reports took into account the historical chronology of the appearance of certain films and genre varieties of comedy. Since the formation of film comedy in the 1920s – 1940s, a change in philosophical paradigms, the transformation of an eccentric principle, the formation of new artistic images and motives have been recorded. The attention of researchers to the problems of the relationship between society and the state, concepts and theories of the comedy principle in the context of government orders was also obvious. Particular attention of researchers was directed to the polymorphic nature of comedy, capable of combining lyricism and farcicalness, serious and frivolous, openly conditional and life-like. A number of speakers addressed to the individual elements of the comedy film poetics, the relationship between visual and sound, transformations of characters’ images, inclusions of theatrical forms, grotesque, and absurdity. Aspects of the film language of Sergei Gerasimov, Ivan Pyryev, Stanislav Barei, Edmond Keosanyan, Georgy Danelia, Leonid Gaidai were analyzed.

Self-report questionnaires in eating disorders: do we need to be careful interpreting self-report in conditions with self-perception issues?

IntroductionA major revolution in psychiatry since the late 20th and early 21st Century has sought to put the individual client at the heart of intervention, promoting shared decision making. Increasing use of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) to evaluate interventions and even steer therapies (“power assisted steering for psychotherapy”, Evans 2012) appears congruent with this. But is caution needed interpreting PROMS where self-perception distortions form a core part of the client’s problem? Eating disorders are a paradigmatic test.ObjectivesTo see if PROM scores at initial presentation at services for ED seemed congruent with help-seeking. We report CORE-Outcome scores here.MethodsInclusion criteria were a diagnosis of an ED and opting in to treatment. Consecutive new clients at all the centres were approached for participation. Scores distributions were analysed to see if numbers of low scores, “non-clinical range” scores seemed congruent with help-seeking.Results18% of the participants who completed the CORE-OM at baseline had a score below the Clinically Significant Change (CSC) cutting point. Though the rate was higher in participants with an Anorexia type I diagnosis (22.6%) than those with other ED diagnoses (15.8%): in the expected direction, the difference was narrowly non-significant (chi-squared = 3.5, d.f. = 1, p = .06). Scores did relate to treatment level.ConclusionsThe predicted elevated rate of non-clinical baseline scores in the AN1 group was narrowly non-significant but the rate of 18% non-clinical scores in a help-seeking population raises a cautionary message about interpretation of change from initially low scores.DisclosureI am one of the three trustees of CORE System Trust which holds the copyright on the CORE measures used in this study but the measures are all provided under a Creative Commons licence so I receive no remuneration from this.

Anthropological aspects of the problem of immortality in modern science fiction literature

The paper deals with the peculiarities of the interpretation of the problem of immortality in the English-language science fiction literature of the late 20th 21st centuries. On the example of the works of R. Sawyer, P. Watts, G. Egan, N. Stevenson, V. Vinge, the author analyzes various ways of considering anthropological aspects of the problem of immortality in science fiction, related to the rethinking of the goals and meaning of existence in the case of the implementation of a transhumanist project to extend the human life. The author concludes that in modern science fiction the theme of immortality is presented in the form of two main options: physical immortality, which implies the impossibility of separating human consciousness from the brain as its material carrier, and digital immortality, associated with a hypothetical technology for scanning consciousness and moving it into a virtual world. Considering these options for immortality, science fiction writers discover in them both technological and humanitarian problems: firstly, it is the unattainability of real immortality, associated with the finiteness of the existence of the universe and (in the second version) with the technical impossibility of eternally ensuring the functioning of the virtual world. Secondly, this is the problem of the semantic fullness of immortal existence, recognized by all the listed writers, associated with the need for a person to set new long-term goals, and, in the case of digital immortality, the problem of rethinking by a person who has turned into pure consciousness, his own nature and acceptance of virtual reality as the only option for him. In general, the ways of revealing the theme of immortality in modern science fiction literature make it possible to see in the transhumanist concepts of immortality a serious anthropological problem related to the fact that the improvement of a persons physical and intellectual abilities will have to entail a change in his consciousness and self-awareness, but to predict the character and the result of such changes is much more difficult than to predict the results of physical modifications of the human body.

Art Experiment as an Implementation of Innovations

Art is an integral, functional and impact model for the iterations of the artists, their creative intentions, self-cognition, and self-realization. Within this process, the artistic self-cognition is linked to the empiric experience, experiments, and searching for the new artistic methods ofrevealing the idea and context of the art object. Experimental modeling and implementation of innovations define the direction of changes in art that include the plot, form orimage, aesthetic reception, and general tendencies. On the turn of the 20th century, fundamental changes took place in the understanding of art. During this period, the range of art practices expanded essentially. Experimental spirit prevailed in the modernist practices; this fact prompted the genesis of new art systems and caused the heuristic process of understanding, interpretation, development, and functioning of art. The art principles and approaches of the postmodern era were characterized with the variety of multiple interpretations of the phenomena of past and present. By the means of experiment, the artists widened the boundaries of art, appealed to the new technologies, used different media ortheir synthesis that eventually caused the annihilation of the type specifics of the art objects. The aim of the article is to investigate the new approaches to modeling the experiments in Ukrainian painting of the late 20th and early 21st centuries as the implementation of innovations. The research methodology is based on the systemic, structural and functional, comparative and historical, and hermeneutic methods

Projections of fire probability and ecosystem vulnerability under 21st century climate across a trans-Andean productivity gradient in Patagonia

Warming trends are altering fire regimes globally, potentially impacting on the long-term persistence of some ecosystems. However, we still lack clear understanding of how climatic stressors will alter fire regimes along productivity gradients. We trained a Random Forests model of fire probabilities across a 5°lat × 2° long trans-Andean rainfall gradient in northern Patagonia using a 23-year long fire record and biophysical, vegetation, human activity and seasonal fire weather predictors. The final model was projected onto mid- and late 21st century fire weather conditions predicted by an ensemble of GCMs using 4 emission scenarios. We finally assessed the vulnerability of different forest ecosystems by matching predicted fire return intervals with critical forest persistence fire return thresholds developed with landscape simulations. Modern fire activity showed the typical hump-shaped relationship with productivity and a negative distance relationship with human settlements. However, fire probabilities were far more sensitive to current season fire weather than to any other predictor. Sharp responsiveness of fire to the accelerating drier/warmer fire seasons predicted for the remainder of the 21st century in the region led to 2 to 3-fold (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5) and 3 to 8-fold increases in fire probabilities for the mid- and late 21st century, respectively. Contrary to current generalizations of larger impacts of warming on fire activity in fuel-rich ecosystems, our modeling results showed first an increase in predicted fire activity in less productive ecosystems (shrublands and steppes) and a later evenly amplified fire activity-productivity relationship with it shape resembling (at higher fire probabilities) the modern hump-shaped relationship. Despite this apparent homogeneous effect of warming on fire activity, vulnerability to predicted late 21st century shorter fire intervals were higher in most productive ecosystems (subalpine deciduous and evergreen Nothofagus-dominated rainforests) due to a general lack of fire-adapted traits in the dominant trees that compose these forests.

Amplifying subtropical hydrological transition over China in early summer tied to weakened mid-latitude synoptic disturbances

The rainy season over southern China (SC) begins with the onset of the South China Sea monsoon around mid-May. We demonstrate here that the SC precipitation exhibits a notable drying (wetting) trend prior to (after) the monsoon onset, leading to a more abrupt thus amplified hydrological transition over SC in early summer. The contrasting precipitation trends are largely driven by the recent decline in mid-latitude synoptic eddy activity. Weakened mid-latitude synoptic disturbances suppress SC frontal activities before the monsoon onset, facilitating the drying trend, and enhance the spatial stationarity of the SC monsoonal front after the monsoon onset, leading to the wetting trend. CMIP6 models in general fail to capture the contrasting trends between the two periods. In models where both the trends in precipitation and mid-latitude synoptic eddy activity are well captured, the amplification of the hydrological transition over SC is projected to continue well into the late 21st century. Our results highlight the footprints of hemispheric-scale climate change in regional hydroclimate and the obvious challenges faced by climate models in capturing such footprints.

The Significance of Joseph Margolis to Late 20th and Early 21st Century Pragmatism

Abstract Joseph Margolis’ philosophical work is both sanguine and fair. It is sanguine because much of it captures the inherent worth and dignity of the human condition. This includes aesthetics, anthropological diversity and history, the diversity of cognitive orientations and objectivity without foundations. Margolis embraces science and naturalism without reductionism. His pragmatism, though, is rooted more in James’ perspectivism, his local nice adaptation, and his relativism than that of Peirce and Dewey and their sense of science and the community of inquirers. Margolis’ strength is his attempt to reconcile positions and his fairness towards others as he tries to wedge his pragmatist position amid others (e.g. Quine, Davidson, Rorty, Brandom). But he celebrates the subjective stance of James, and downplayed the communal sense of Peirce and Dewey so vital to epistemic advances.

Detection and projection of climatic comfort changes in China's mainland in a warming world

Climatic comfort, which refers to the comfort of the human body's thermal sensations, is important for the human habitat. Although considerable efforts have been provided to examine changes in climatic comfort response to global warming from a partial perspective, the trajectory shift in past and future climatic comfort conditions in China's mainland based on uniform indicators has not been revealed. The spatiotemporal pattern of climatic comfort over historical and future periods was investigated in this study, using China's mainland as an example. The temperature‒humidity index was adopted on the basis of homogenised meteorological station observations and high-resolution climate model simulations to analyse the trends of comfort/discomfort days from 1960 to 2017 and project changes in climatic comfort under representative concentration pathway scenarios in the late 21st century (2071–2100). Results show a substantial decrease in cold-uncomfortable days and a moderate increase in comfortable and warm-uncomfortable days from 1960 to 2017. In the late 21st century, the signals of increasing warm-uncomfortable and decreasing cold-uncomfortable days are projected to enhance significantly while the direction of changes in comfortable days exhibits a north‒south divergence. The uneven changes in warm- and cold-uncomfortable days and an overall decrease in comfortable days in the late 21st century dominate the future trends in climatic comfort in the densely populated southeast half of China. Effective measures taken for adapting to and mitigating global climate warming can considerably avoid the adverse impact of the projected change.

Potential heat-risk avoidance from nationally determined emission reductions targets in the future

The increasing heat stress from the combined effect of changes such as temperature and humidity in the context of global change receives growing concerns. However, there is limited information for future changes in heat stress, as well as its potential socioeconomic impact, under the intended nationally determined mitigation scenarios. This study established an efficient evaluation method to quantify the benefits from the potential heat stress reduction from a continued intended nationally determined contributions (INDC) mitigation effort. The future heat stress over global land, quantified by the wet bulb globe temperature, was investigated based on the temperature sensitivity approach and multi-model simulations from the latest generation global climate models. The INDC continuous-effort scenario and the delayed-effort scenario, as well as the target-control scenarios of 2 °C warming, were compared. We found that with the delayed mitigation efforts, the increase in frequency, duration, and cumulative intensity of extreme heat stress relative to the INDC continuous-effort scenario in the late 21st century could reach to 113%, 193%, and 212%, respectively. If more ambitious efforts above current INDC pledges were implemented to achieve the 2 °C global temperature goal, the corresponding avoided impact of heat stress frequency, duration, and cumulative intensity in the late 21st century was estimated to be 32%, 37%, and 40%, respectively. Future changes in heat stress in low latitudes, where most developing countries are located, are most sensitive to emission reduction. Our results highlighted the potential avoided heat stress-related impact of global warming from efforts towards climate change mitigation.

Future Changes of Atmospheric Energy Cycle in CMIP5 Climate Models

AbstractFuture changes in the atmospheric energy cycle were estimated by using 12 climate models from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) and mass‐weighted isentropic zonal‐mean framework. In this framework, the zonal‐mean available potential energy (AZ) is converted to the zonal‐mean kinetic energy (KZ) through mean‐meridional direct circulations, and KZ is converted to the wave energy (W), the sum of eddy available potential energy and eddy kinetic energy, through wave‐mean flow interactions. The comparison between the late 21st century in a high emission scenario and the late 20th century in the historical scenario indicates a significant increase in AZ and KZ in winter in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and the Southern Hemisphere (SH). The wave energy significantly decreases in the NH winter but slightly increases in the SH winter. In the NH winter, the stationary wave energy significantly decreases, and the transient wave energy shifts poleward. Global warming reduces the baroclinic instability wave activity, which suppresses the upward Eliassen‐Palm flux and wave‐induced extratropical direct circulation. It decreases the dynamic energy conversion rates C(AZ, KZ) and C(KZ, W). On the other hand, the diabatic wave energy generation rate (QE) is projected to increase, particularly in the SH. The future W change is consistent with the change in the sum of C(KZ, W) and QE. Changes in both the dynamical energy conversion associated with wave‐mean flow interactions and the generation of eddy available potential energy associated with diabatic heating processes are necessary to explain the wave energy change.

Reparative interpellation: public art’s Indigenous and non-human publics

This article considers the multiple ways in which public art interpellates viewers as settlers, Indigenous and non-human subjects. It could be argued that much public artwork in the late 20th and early 21st century has a ‘reparative’ function through its socially-engaged, community-specific and consciousness-raising aspects. To do so, however, would be to conflate the reparative with the recognition of injustice rather than understand it as the action of repair. The author asserts that for public art to engage in reparative work necessitates interrupting the normative forms and materialities of public art that interpellate the ‘public’ as settler subjects. How, he asks, might the reparative potential of public art be re-envisioned through a consideration of Indigenous and non-human publics?

Tripling of western US particulate pollution from wildfires in a warming climate

SignificanceRecord-setting fires in the western United States over the last decade caused severe air pollution, loss of human life, and property damage. Enhanced drought and increased biomass in a warmer climate may fuel larger and more frequent wildfires in the coming decades. Applying an empirical statistical model to fires projected by Earth System Models including climate-ecosystem-socioeconomic interactions, we show that fine particulate pollution over the US Pacific Northwest could double to triple during late summer to fall by the late 21st century under intermediate- and low-mitigation scenarios. The historic fires and resulting pollution extremes of 2017-2020 could occur every 3 to 5 y under 21st-century climate change, posing challenges for air quality management and threatening public health.

A Framework to Project Future Rainfall Scenarios: An Application to Shallow Landslide-Triggering Summer Rainfall in Wanzhou County China

Fatal landslides are a widespread geohazard that have affected millions of people and have claimed the lives of thousands around the globe. A change in climate has significantly increased the frequency and magnitude of rainfall, which affect the susceptibility of slopes to shallow landslides. This paper presents a methodological framework to assess the future changes in extreme and seasonal rainfall magnitudes with climate model projections. This framework was applied to project summer rainfall over Wanzhou County, China, using an ensemble of four regional climate models (RCMs) from the East Asian domain of the Coordinated Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) under the Phase 5 Coupled Intercomparison Modeling Project (CMIP5). The results find that extreme daily rainfall was projected to decrease in the mid-21st century, with an uncertainty measured by a coefficient of variation between 5% and 25%. The mean seasonal rainfall is projected to increase in the mid-21st century up to a factor of 1.4, and up to a factor of 1.8 in the late-21st century. The variation in the mid-21st century ranged from 10% to 35%, and from 30% to 50% in the late-21st century. This case study delivered a proof-of-concept for a methodological framework to derive shallow landslide-triggering rainfall scenarios under climate change conditions. The resulting spatially distributed climate change factors (CCFs) can be used to incorporate future rainfall scenarios in slope susceptibility models and climate impact assessments.

Scotland and Pedagogy: Moving from the Anglophone Towards the Continental?

Across the Anglophone world, throughout the late 20th and early 21st century, learning and teaching became the go-to descriptions for teacher and learner activity. Notably, this term posited individualistic views that ‘education is an individual right’ realised through technically proficient teacher-action that engenders favourable positioning in a post-industrial, efficient world. More recently, pedagogy seems to have remerged as a flavoursome term. However, its use is still dominated by the doctrines of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) realised through education science assumptions and approaches. In turn, across much of the Anglophone world, pedagogy is mostly described as ‘the methods and practices of teaching’ often associated with delivery-type teaching and learning judged by quantitative uplift on test scores. Pedagogy, it seems, is still subservient to individualism reified by forms of technically legitimate teaching competence. In many respects, Scotland is no different: policy frames and explanations (Adams, 2016) often legitimise through technocratic and positivist Discourses (Gee, 2012). Matters such as the recent incorporation of the UNHRC into Scottish law offer hope though, for they offer ‘rupture’. The OECD might prevail over system-wide evaluation and conversations about ‘curriculum’ dominate, but ever-increasing calls to shift ‘schooling’ from ‘learning and teaching’ to ‘education, more broadly conceived’ seem to have widened discourse (Gee, 2012) and acknowledged the inherently political. While this has not magically moved pedagogy on, it is clear is that pedagogy as ‘being in and acting on the world, with and for others is finding a Scottish voice.

Rainfall extremes on the rise: Observations during 1951–2020 and bias-corrected CMIP6 projections for near- and late 21st century over Indian landmass

In this study, we provide a comprehensive analysis to identify and quantify spatial patterns of heavy, very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall and their trends that have emerged during the last seven decades (1951 to 2020) of monsoon months (June to September) under warming scenario as well as to project these extreme rainfall counts during the near- (2036–2060) and late-21st century (2075–2099) w.r.t. historical period (1990–2014) using bias-corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project-6 (CMIP6) multi-model ensemble method. On the basis of daily maximum rainfall occurrences, the Central India, North-East India, Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats are found to be susceptible to extreme rainfall zones over the Indian landmass. The trend distribution during 1951–2020 suggests an increase of 42–63 heavy rainfall events over Orissa, Chattisgarh and parts of Madhya Pradesh and a declination over Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and hilly regions of North-East India. Our study suggests the causal theory for the rise of monsoon rainfall extremes in terms of both dynamics and local-scale thermodynamics over the sub-continent. Moreover, the bias-corrected dataset is developed using Empirical Quantile Mapping (EQM) for historic and projected climate for the three scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP5-8.5) using output from 20 General Circulation Models (GCMs) from CMIP6. Hence, the bias-corrected projections suggest that most susceptible places for increasing heavy rainfall extremes likely to be Mumbai, Pune, Panaji in the Western coasts of India (Western Ghats), Itanagar and Shillong in the North-East India, Raipur and Bhopal in the Central India in near- and late-21st century under all scenarios in a warming climate. Thus, the bias-corrected projections from CMIP6-GCMs can be used for hydroclimate impact assessment in Indian region under the changing atmospheric circulation dynamics and warming induced by greenhouse gases.

The Red Gown: Reflections on the In/Visibility of Menstruation in Scotland

During the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, menstruation became more present in public discourse in Scotland. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the complex interplay of visibility and invisibility that characterises menstruation’s place in the nation’s wider cultural landscape. In this article, we explore the context of menstruation in the town of St Andrews specifically and Scotland more broadly, during the late 20th and early 21st century, and ask what this reveals about menstrual absence and presence in public debates. The University of St Andrews lies at the centre of this case study because it has been one of the Scottish institutions that has initiated a rollout of free menstrual products as a result of the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act of 2021. The University’s Centre for Contemporary Art also hosted Bee Hughes as artist-in-residence, whose practice focuses on the visible and invisible aspects of menstruation. Although impacted by a university strike and the Covid-19 pandemic, our collaboration has explored collections of menstrual culture in Scotland and broader questions of menstrual representation, reflecting on how established symbols with other connotations (notably the ceremonial red gown at the University of St Andrews) might provide a way of thinking about menstrual in/visibility. In this article, we discuss how these histories might be both present (institutionalised) and absent (when not on display). This paper presents our findings, in which the artist documents their first visit to St Andrews prior to the strike and pandemic, in relation to historical and contextual materials we located together.

Historical and cultural aspects of obesity: From a symbol of wealth and prosperity to the epidemic of the 21st century.

World Health Organization defines obesity as abnormal or excess adipose tissue accumulation. Nowadays, this condition is a serious threat to the public health in most countries around the world. Obesity adversely affects physical, mental, and in most cultures, social well-being. However, throughout the ages-from ancient times to the 21st century-this condition has been subject to various interpretations. As a matter of fact, obesity has not always been regarded as a disease. For many decades, excessive body weight has been considered rather a symbol of health. It was a marker of wealth and prosperity, as well as a sign of high social status. The centuries that passed on the development of science and medicine have gradually changed its face, but significant progress in understanding the causes and consequences of obesity has been made in the last 30 years. This paper presents the historical outline of obesity and its treatment from ancient times to the present-from its affirmation to the epidemic in the late 20th and 21st century.

Effects of Increased Drought in Amazon Forests Under Climate Change: Separating the Roles of Canopy Responses and Soil Moisture

AbstractThe Amazon forests are one of the largest ecosystem carbon pools on Earth. Although more frequent and prolonged future droughts have been predicted, the impacts have remained largely uncertain, as most land surface models (LSMs) fail to capture the vegetation drought responses. In this study, the ability of the LSM JSBACH to simulate the drought responses of leaf area index (LAI) and leaf litter production in the Amazon forests is evaluated against artificial drought experiments. Based on the evaluation, improvements are implemented, including a dependency of leaf growth on leaf carbon allocation and a better representation of drought‐dependent leaf shedding. The modified JSBACH is shown to capture the drought responses at two sites and across different regions of the basin. It is then coupled with an atmospheric model to simulate the carbon and biogeophysical feedbacks of drought under future climate. We separate the drought impacts into (a) the direct effect, resulting from drier soil and stomatal closure, which does not involve a change in canopy structure, and (b) the LAI effect, resulting from leaf shedding and involving canopy response. We show that the latter accounts for 35% of reduced land carbon uptake (9 ± 10 vs. 26 ± 7 g/m2/yr; mean ± 1 sd) and 12% of surface warming (0.09 ± 0.03 vs. 0.7 ± 0.07 K) during the late 21st century. A north‐south dipole of precipitation change is found, which is largely attributable to the direct effect. The results highlight the importance of incorporating drought deciduousness of tropical rainforests in LSMs to better simulate land‐atmosphere interactions in the future.

Future potential distribution and expansion trends of highland barley under climate change in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau (QTP)

Highland barley is an important grain crop in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) of China. However, rare knowledge is available on the spatial pattern of habitat suitability across QTP and how it would be affected by future climate change. Based on 191 presence records, the probability of highland barley across the QTP under climate change is simulated by using the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model. And the critical environmental variable (s) affecting the distribution of highland barley and the hotspots of habitat degradation/expansion during the 21st century are investigated. The results show that the daily minimum temperature of coldest month and annual precipitation are determined as the two most important environmental variables for predicting habitat distributions. Across the QTP, future climate change may result in an increase in the suitable area for planting highland barley northward, westward, and upward during the 21st century. Highland barley in river valleys of the southeastern and northeast plateau, where areas of medium and optimal suitable habitats are concentrated, may experience contractions in areas of habitat suitability during the 21st century. By the late 21st century, the average expansion and contraction of suitable habitat areas are 0.46 and 0.14 million km2, respectively, and the upper limit elevation suitable for planting barley may increase by 215 m. Our results could provide valuable distribution information to the national and local administrators for developing the special industry of highland barley in the QTP.