Towards an Understanding of the Twentieth-Century Cooling Trend in the Southeastern United States: Biogeophysical Impacts of Land-Use Change

AbstractThis paper explores the link between the anomalous warming hole in the southeastern United States and a major land-use/land-cover (LULC) change in the region. Land surface and satellite observations were analyzed to estimate the net radiative forcing due to LULC change. Albedo and latent energy were specifically addressed for the dominant LULC change of agriculture to forests. It was assumed that in the energy-limited environment of the region, the partition of changes in available energy due to albedo will mostly impact the sensible heat. The results show that in the southeastern United States, for the period of 1920 to 1992, the changes in sensible (as a result of albedo) and latent energies are in direct competition with each other. In the spring and early summer months, the croplands are in peak production and the latent energy associated with their evapotranspiration (ET) is comparable to that of the forests so the decrease in radiation due to albedo dominates the signal. However, during the ...

[1]  D. Easterling,et al.  Observations: Atmosphere and surface , 2013 .

[2]  G. Meehl,et al.  Externally forced and internally generated decadal climate variability associated with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation , 2013 .

[3]  Roger F. Auch,et al.  Land changes and their driving forces in the Southeastern United States , 2010 .

[4]  T. Chase,et al.  Investigating the climate impacts of global land cover change in the community climate system model , 2010 .

[5]  Michael K Schwartz,et al.  The climate velocity of the contiguous United States during the 20th century , 2013, Global change biology.

[6]  K. Gallo,et al.  Methodology and Results of Calculating Central California Surface Temperature Trends: Evidence of Human-Induced Climate Change? , 2006 .

[7]  R. Abt,et al.  Southern Forest Resource Assessment highlights: The Southern Timber Market to 2040 , 2002 .

[8]  Claude N. Williams,et al.  Improved Historical Temperature and Precipitation Time Series for U.S. Climate Divisions , 2014 .

[9]  R. Betts,et al.  The influence of land-use change and landscape dynamics on the climate system: relevance to climate-change policy beyond the radiative effect of greenhouse gases , 2002, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[10]  Maosheng Zhao,et al.  Development of a global evapotranspiration algorithm based on MODIS and global meteorology data , 2007 .

[11]  Kurt H. Riitters,et al.  Comparison of cropland and forest surface temperatures across the conterminous United States , 2012 .

[12]  Mariana Vertenstein,et al.  Effects of land use change on North American climate: impact of surface datasets and model biogeophysics , 2004 .

[13]  Christopher B. Field,et al.  Protecting climate with forests , 2008 .

[14]  K. Findell,et al.  Regional and Global Impacts of Land Cover Change and Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies , 2009 .

[15]  K. Kunkel,et al.  Can CGCMs Simulate the Twentieth-Century “Warming Hole” in the Central United States? , 2006 .

[16]  R. McNider,et al.  Some Physical and Computational Issues in Land Surface Data Assimilation of Satellite Skin Temperatures , 2012, Pure and Applied Geophysics.

[17]  P. Dirmeyer,et al.  University of Nebraska-Lincoln DigitalCommons @ University of Nebraska-Lincoln Papers in Natural Resources Natural Resources , School of 2014 Land cover changes and their biogeophysical effects on climate , 2016 .

[18]  Jerry Melillo,et al.  Effect of land-cover change on terrestrial carbon dynamics in the southern United States. , 2006, Journal of environmental quality.

[19]  G. Meehl,et al.  The Importance of Land-Cover Change in Simulating Future Climates , 2005, Science.

[20]  E. Kalnay,et al.  Impacts of land use land cover on temperature trends over the continental United States: assessment using the North American Regional Reanalysis , 2010 .

[21]  James F. Cruise,et al.  An integrated crop and hydrologic modeling system to estimate hydrologic impacts of crop irrigation demands , 2015, Environ. Model. Softw..

[22]  Michael J. Puma,et al.  Effects of irrigation on global climate during the 20th century , 2010 .

[23]  Jiyuan Liu,et al.  Regional temperature change over the Huang‐Huai‐Hai Plain of China: the roles of irrigation versus urbanization , 2014 .

[24]  J. O'Brien,et al.  Reconciling the Spatial Distribution of the Surface Temperature Trends in the Southeastern United States , 2012 .

[25]  R. Betts,et al.  Land use/land cover changes and climate: modeling analysis and observational evidence , 2011 .

[26]  S. Rahmstorf,et al.  Exceptional twentieth-century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation , 2015 .

[27]  Claudia Tebaldi,et al.  Combinations of Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings in Twentieth-Century Climate , 2004 .

[28]  J. Rogers.  The 20th century cooling trend over the southeastern United States , 2012, Climate Dynamics.

[29]  N. Bliss,et al.  Changes in population and agricultural land in conterminous United States counties, 1790 to 1997 , 2002 .

[30]  Curtis V. Price,et al.  Enhanced Historical Land-Use and Land-Cover Data Sets of the U.S. Geological Survey , 2007 .

[31]  Walter A. Robinson,et al.  General circulation model simulations of recent cooling in the east‐central United States , 2002 .

[32]  J. Wickham,et al.  An isoline separating relatively warm from relatively cool wintertime forest surface temperatures for the southeastern United States , 2014 .

[33]  A. Blackadar,et al.  High resolution models of the planetary boundary layer , 1979 .

[34]  C. Woodcock,et al.  Evaluation of MODIS albedo product (MCD43A) over grassland, agriculture and forest surface types during dormant and snow-covered periods , 2014 .

[35]  P. Wetzel,et al.  Concerning the Relationship between Evapotranspiration and Soil Moisture , 1987 .

[36]  J. Seinfeld,et al.  Climatic effects of 1950-2050 changes in US anthropogenic aerosols - Part 2: Climate response , 2011 .

[37]  P. Michaels,et al.  Nature of observed temperature changes across the United States during the 20th century , 2001 .

[38]  Crowley,et al.  Atmospheric science: Methane rises from wetlands , 2011, Nature.

[39]  R. Arritt,et al.  Altered hydrologic feedback in a warming climate introduces a “warming hole” , 2004 .

[40]  Xuebin Zhang,et al.  Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during the 20th century , 2000, Data, Models and Analysis.

[41]  P. Ciais,et al.  Historical land-use induced evapotranspiration changes estimated from present-day observations and reconstructed land-cover maps , 2014 .

[42]  William L. Crosson,et al.  Toward a Dynamic-Thermodynamic Assimilation of Satellite Surface Temperature in Numerical Atmospheric Models , 1994 .

[43]  James W. Jones,et al.  Testing and Improving Evapotranspiration and Soil Water Balance of the DSSAT Crop Models , 2004 .

[44]  R. Knox,et al.  Reconstructed historical land cover and biophysical parameters for studies of land-atmosphere interactions within the eastern United States , 2008 .

[45]  H. Diaz,et al.  Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record , 1988 .

[46]  Elie Bou-Zeid,et al.  Synergistic Interactions between Urban Heat Islands and Heat Waves: The Impact in Cities Is Larger than the Sum of Its Parts* , 2013 .

[47]  Ashutosh Limaye,et al.  A Real-Time Gridded Crop Model for Assessing Spatial Drought Stress on Crops in the Southeastern United States , 2011 .

[48]  A. Russell,et al.  Potential impact of land use change on future regional climate in the Southeastern U.S.: Reforestation and crop land conversion , 2013 .

[49]  E. Kalnay,et al.  Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate , 2003, Nature.

[50]  W. G. Strand,et al.  Climate System Response to External Forcings and Climate Change Projections in CCSM4 , 2012 .

[51]  R. Pielke Sr.,et al.  Modelling the effects of land‐use/land‐cover changes on the near‐surface atmosphere in southern South America , 2012 .

[52]  J. Townshend,et al.  Global land cover classi(cid:142) cation at 1 km spatial resolution using a classi(cid:142) cation tree approach , 2004 .

[53]  Kristen Foley,et al.  Attribution of the United States “warming hole”: Aerosol indirect effect and precipitable water vapor , 2014, Scientific Reports.

[54]  K. Caldeira,et al.  Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[55]  Jehn-Yih Juang,et al.  Separating the effects of albedo from eco‐physiological changes on surface temperature along a successional chronosequence in the southeastern United States , 2007 .

[56]  Jonathan E. Pleim,et al.  Development of a Land Surface Model. Part II: Data Assimilation , 2003 .

[57]  W. J. Shuttleworth,et al.  Sensitivity of ground heat flux to vegetation cover fraction and leaf area index , 1999 .

[58]  S. Rodionov.  A sequential algorithm for testing climate regime shifts , 2004 .

[59]  R. Lund,et al.  Impacts of land use/land cover change on climate and future research priorities , 2010 .

[60]  Victor Brovkin,et al.  Determining robust impacts of land-use induced land-cover changes on surface climate over North America and Eurasia; Results from the first set of LUCID experiments , 2012 .

[61]  R. Dickinson,et al.  Impacts of land use change on climate , 2010 .

[62]  Jerry Y. Pan,et al.  Intercomparison of MODIS albedo retrievals and in situ measurements across the global FLUXNET network , 2012 .

[63]  Maosheng Zhao,et al.  Improvements to a MODIS global terrestrial evapotranspiration algorithm , 2011 .

[64]  R. Allen,et al.  Trends in Twentieth-Century Temperature Extremes across the United States , 2002 .

[65]  Peter E. Thornton,et al.  Simulating the Biogeochemical and Biogeophysical Impacts of Transient Land Cover Change and Wood Harvest in the Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) from 1850 to 2100 , 2012 .

[66]  Elena Shevliakova,et al.  Modeled Impact of Anthropogenic Land Cover Change on Climate , 2007 .

[67]  Searching for a regional fingerprint of aerosol radiative forcing in the southeastern US , 1998 .

[68]  M. Hoerling,et al.  Attribution of the Seasonality and Regionality in Climate Trends over the United States during 1950–2000 , 2009 .

[69]  Martin Wild,et al.  Impact of global dimming and brightening on global warming , 2007 .

[70]  W. Lapenta,et al.  Retrieval of Model Grid-Scale Heat Capacity Using Geostationary Satellite Products. Part I: First Case-Study Application , 2005 .

[71]  Dennis D. Baldocchi,et al.  How will land use affect air temperature in the surface boundary layer? Lessons learned from a comparative study on the energy balance of an oak savanna and annual grassland in California, USA , 2013 .

[72]  S. Planton,et al.  A Simple Parameterization of Land Surface Processes for Meteorological Models , 1989 .

[73]  James W. Jones,et al.  The DSSAT cropping system model , 2003 .

[74]  C. Müller,et al.  Uncertainties in climate responses to past land cover change: First results from the LUCID intercomparison study , 2009 .

[75]  Lara M. Kueppers,et al.  Irrigation cooling effect: Regional climate forcing by land‐use change , 2007 .

[76]  Susan Solomon,et al.  Spatial and seasonal patterns in climate change, temperatures, and precipitation across the United States , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.