Climate and vegetation in the Middle East: Interannual variability and drought feedbacks

Journal of Climate

Volumn 20, Issue 15, 2007, Pages 3924-3941

  Zaitchik, Benjamin F ^a,b   Evans, Jason P ^a   Geerken, Roland A ^a   Smith, Ronald B ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION; BOUNDARY LAYERS; DROUGHT; HEAT FLUX; SOIL MOISTURE; VEGETATION;

EUPHRATES PLAIN; INTERANNUAL VARIABILITY; NORMALIZED DIFFERENCE VEGETATION INDEX; PLANETARY BOUNDARY LAYER;

CLIMATOLOGY;

AIR TEMPERATURE; ANNUAL VARIATION; CLIMATE MODELING; CLIMATE VARIATION; DROUGHT; ENERGY FLUX; LATENT HEAT FLUX; NDVI; PRECIPITATION (CLIMATOLOGY); REGIONAL CLIMATE; SENSIBLE HEAT FLUX; SOIL MOISTURE; VEGETATION COVER;

ASIA; EURASIA; MIDDLE EAST; ZAGROS;

EID: 34548132017     PISSN: 08948755     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI4223.1     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. 2. Climatic Change, 29, 91-99.
2. Baldocchi, D. D., L. K. Xu, and N. Kiang, 2004: How plant functional-type, weather, seasonal drought, and soil physical properties alter water and energy fluxes of an oak-grass savanna and an annual grassland. Agric. For. Meteor., 123, 13-39.
3. Betts, A. K., 2004: Understanding hydrometeorology using global models. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 85, 1673-1688.
4. Betts, A. K., and J. H. Ball, 1998: FIFE surface climate and site-average dataset 1987-89. J. Atmos. Sci., 55, 1091-1108.
5. Bright, D. R., and S. L. Mullen, 2002: The sensitivity of the numerical simulation of the Southwest monsoon boundary layer to the choice of PBL turbulence parameterization in MM5. Wea. Forecasting, 17, 99-114.
6. Brunsell, N. A., 2006: Characterization of land-surface precipitation feedback regimes with remote sensing. Remote Sens. Environ., 100, 200-211.
7. Charney, J. G., 1975: Dynamics of deserts and drought in Sahel. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 101, 193-202.
8. Charney, J. G., W. J. Quirk, S. H. Chow, and J. Kornfield, 1977: Comparative study of effects of albedo change on drought in semi-arid regions. J. Atmos. Sci., 34, 1366-1385.
9. Chen, F., and K. Mitchell, 1999: Using GEWEX/ISLSCP forcing data to simulate global soil moisture fields and hydrological cycle for 1987-1988. J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 77, 1-16.
10. Chen, F., and J. Dudhia, 2001: Coupling an advanced land surface-hydrology model with the Penn State-NCAR MM5 modeling system. Part II: Preliminary model validation. Mon. Wea. Rev., 129, 587-604.
11. Courel, M. F., R. S. Kandel, and S. I. Rasool, 1984: Surface albedo and the Sahel drought. Nature, 307, 528-531.
12. Dall'Olmo, G., and A. Karnieli, 2002: Monitoring phenological cycles of desert ecosystems using NDVI and LST data derived from NOAA-AVHRR imagery. Int. J. Remote Sens., 23, 4055-4071.
13. deMenocal, P. B., 2001: Cultural responses to climate change during the Late Holocene. Science, 292, 667-673.
14. DePauw, E., 2004: Drought early warning systems for the Near East. Challenges and Strategies for Dryland Agriculture, S. C. Rao and J. Ryan, Eds., American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America, 93-111.
15. Dudhia, J., 1993: A nonhydrostatic version of the Penn State-NCAR mesoscale model: Validation tests and simulation of an Atlantic cyclone and cold front. Mon. Wea. Rev., 121, 1493-1513.
16. Eltahir, E. A. B., 1998: A soil moisture rainfall feedback mechanism 1. Theory and observations. Water Resour. Res., 34, 765-776.
17. Evans, J. P., and R. Geerken, 2004: Discrimination between climate and human-induced dryland degradation. J. Arid Environ., 57, 535-554.
18. Evans, J. P., and R. B. Smith, 2005: Classifying precipitation events in the Fertile Crescent. Preprints, 16th Conf. on Climate Variability and Change, San Diego, CA, Amer. Meteor. Soc., CD-ROM, 9.4.
19. Evans, J. P., and R. Geerken, 2006: Classifying rangeland vegetation type and coverage using a Fourier component based similarity measure. Int. J. Remote Sens., 105, 1-8.
20. FAO, 1997: Irrigation in the Near East region in figures. Water Reports 9, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, 292 pp. [Available online at http://www.fao.org/docrep/w4356e/w4356e00.htm.]
21. Geerken, R., and M. Ilaiwi, 2004: Assessment of rangeland degradation and development of a strategy for rehabilitation. Remote Sens. Environ., 90, 490-504.
22. Geerken, R., N. Batikha, D. Celis, and E. Depauw, 2005a: Differentiation of rangeland vegetation and assessment of its status: Field investigations and MODIS and SPOT VEGETATION data analyses. Int. J. Remote Sens., 26, 4499-4526.
23. Geerken, R., B. Zaitchik, and J. P. Evans, 2005b: Classifying rangeland vegetation type and coverage from NDVI time series using Fourier filtered cycle similarity. Int. J. Remote Sens., 26, 5535-5554.
24. Grell, G. A., J. Dudhia, and D. R. Stauffer, 1994: A description of the fifth-generation Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5). NCAR Tech. Note NCAR/TN-398+STR, Boulder, CO, 117 pp.
25. Gutman, G., and A. Ignatov, 1998: The derivation of the green vegetation fraction from NOAA/AVHRR data for use in numerical weather prediction models. Int. J. Remote Sens., 19, 1533-1543.
26. Heck, P., D. Luthi, and C. Schär, 1999: The influence of vegetation on the summertime evolution of European soil moisture. Phys. Chem. Earth, 24B, 609-614.
27. Hole, F., 1994: Environmental instabilities and urban origins. Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East: the Organizational Dynamics of Complexity, Prehistory Press, 121-151.
28. Hong, S. Y., and H. L. Pan, 1996: Nonlocal boundary layer vertical diffusion in a medium-range forecast model. Mon. Wea. Rev., 124, 2322-2339.
29. Jacquemin, B., and J. Noilhan, 1990: Sensitivity study and validation of a land surface parameterization using the HAPEX-MOBILHY data set. Bound.-Layer Meteor., 52, 93-134.
30. Kalnay, E., and Coauthors, 1996: The NCEP/NCAR 40-Year Re-analysis Project. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 77, 437-471.
31. Koster, R. D., and Coauthors, 2004: Regions of strong coupling between soil moisture and precipitation. Science, 305, 1138-1140.
32. Kremer, R. G., E. R. Hunt, S. W. Running, and J. C. Coughlan, 1996: Simulating vegetational and hydrologic responses to natural climatic variation and GCM-predicted climate change in a semi-arid ecosystem in Washington, USA. J. Arid Environ., 33, 23-38.
33. Lane, D. R., D. P. Coffin, and W. K. Lauenroth, 1998: Effects of soil texture and precipitation on above-ground net primary productivity and vegetation structure across the central grassland region of the United States. J. Veg. Sci., 9, 239-250.
34. Laval, K., and L. Picon, 1986: Effect of a change of the surface albedo of the Sahel on climate. J. Atmos. Sci., 43, 2418-2429.
35. LeHouerou, H. N., 1996: Climate change, drought and desertification. J. Arid Environ., 34, 133-185.
36. Liang, S. L., C. J. Shuey, A. L. Russ, H. L. Fang, M. Z. Chen, C. L. Walthall, C. S. T. Daughtry, and R. Hunt, 2002: Narrowband to broadband conversions of land surface albedo: II. Validation. Remote Sens. Environ., 84, 25-41.
37. Liou, K. N., 2002: An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation. 2d ed. International Geophysics Series, Vol. 84, Academic Press, 583 pp.
38. Los, S. O., 1993: Calibration adjustment of the NOAA AVHRR normalized difference vegetation index without recourse to component channel-1 and channel-2 data. Int. J. Remote Sens., 14, 1907-1917.
39. Mahrt, L., and M. Ek, 1984: The influence of atmospheric stability on potential evaporation. J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 23, 222-234.
40. Mahrt, L., and H. L. Pan, 1984: A two-layer model of soil hydrology. Bound.-Layer Meteor., 29, 1-20.
41. Maisongrande, P., B. Duchemin, and G. Dedieu, 2004: VEGETATION/SPOT: An operational mission for the Earth monitoring; presentation of new standard products. Int. J. Remote Sens., 25, 9-14.
42. Matsui, T., V. Lakshmi, and E. E. Small, 2005: The effects of satellite-derived vegetation cover variability on simulated land-atmosphere interactions in the NAMS. J. Climate, 18, 21-40.
43. Mlawer, E. J., S. J. Taubman, P. D. Brown, M. J. Iacono, and S. A. Clough, 1997: Radiative transfer for inhomogeneous atmosphere: RRTM, a validated correlated-k model for the long-wave. J. Geophys. Res., 102, 16 663-16 682.
44. Myhre, G., E. J. Highwood, K. P. Shine, and F. Stordal, 1998: New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases. Geophys. Res. Lett., 25, 2715-2718.
45. Nielsen, T. T., and H. K. Adriansen, 2005: Government policies and land degradation in the Middle East. Land Degradation Development, 16, 151-161.
46. Pan, H. L., and L. Mahrt, 1987: Interaction between soil hydrology and boundary-layer development. Bound.-Layer Meteor., 38, 185-202.
47. Reisner, J., R. J. Rasmussen, and R. T. Bruintjes, 1998: Explicit forecasting of supercooled liquid water in winter storms using the MM5 mesoscale model. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 124B, 1071-1107.
48. Rodwell, M. J., and B. J. Hoskins, 1996: Monsoons and the dynamics of deserts. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 122, 1385-1404.
49. Schaake, J. C., V. I. Koren, Q. Y. Duan, K. Mitchell, and F. Chen, 1996: A simple water balance model (SWB) for estimating runoff at different spatial and temporal scales. J. Geophys. Res., 101, 7461-7475.
50. Schär, C., D. Luthi, U. Beyerle, and E. Heise, 1999: The soil-precipitation feedback: A process study with a regional climate model. J. Climate, 12, 722-741.
51. Schär, C., P. L. Vidale, D. Luthi, C. Frei, C. Haberli, M. A. Liniger, and C. Appenzeller, 2004: The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves. Nature, 427, 332-336.
52. Schmidt, H., and A. Karnieli, 2000: Remote sensing of the seasonal variability of vegetation in a semi-arid environment. J. Arid Environ., 45, 43-59.
53. Shukla, J., and Y. Mintz, 1982: Influence of land-surface evapotranspiration on the earth's climate. Science, 215, 1498-1501.
54. Small, E. E., and S. A. Kurc, 2003: Tight coupling between soil moisture and the surface radiation budget in semiarid environments: Implications for land-atmosphere interactions. Water Resour. Res., 39, 1278-1291.
55. Sud, Y. C., and M. Fennessy, 1982: A study of the influence of surface albedo on July circulation in semi-arid regions using the GLAS GCM. J. Climatol., 2, 105-125.
56. Sud, Y. C., and M. J. Fennessy, 1984: Influence of evaporation in semi-arid regions on the July circulation - A numerical study. J. Climatol., 4, 383-398.
57. Sud, Y. C., and W. E. Smith, 1985: The influence of surface-roughness of deserts on the July circulation (a numerical study). Bound.-Layer Meteor., 33, 15-49.
58. Sud, Y. C., D. M. Mocko, K. M. Lau, and R. Atlas, 2003: Simulating the midwestern U.S. drought of 1988 with a GCM. J. Climate, 16, 3946-3965.
59. Vanacker, V., M. Linderman, F. Lupo, S. Flasse, and E. Lambin, 2005: Impact of short-term rainfall fluctuation on interannual land cover change in sub-Saharan Africa. Global Ecol. Biogeogr., 14, 123-135.
60. Weiss, E., S. E. Marsh, and E. S. Pfirman, 2001: Application of NOAA-AVHRR NDVI time-series data to assess changes in Saudi Arabia's rangelands. Int. J. Remote Sens., 22, 1005-1027.
61. Weiss, H., and R. S. Bradley, 2001: What drives societal collapse? Science, 291, 609-610.
62. Weiss, J. L., D. S. Gutzler, J. E. A. Coonrod, and C. N. Dahm, 2004: Long-term vegetation monitoring with NDVI in a diverse semi-arid setting, central New Mexico, USA. J. Arid Environ., 58, 249-272.
63. Xie, P. P., and P. A. Arkin, 1996: Analyses of global monthly precipitation using gauge observations, satellite estimates, and numerical model predictions. J. Climate, 9, 840-858.
64. Zaitchik, B. F., J. Evans, and R. B. Smith, 2005: MODIS-derived boundary conditions for a mesoscale climate model: Application to irrigated agriculture in the Euphrates basin. Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 1727-1743.
65. Zaitchik, B. F., A. K. Macalady, L. R. Bonneau, and R. B. Smith, 2006: Europe's 2003 heat wave: A satellite view of impacts and land-atmosphere feedbacks. Int. J. Climatol., 26, 743-769.
66. Zawadzki, I., E. Torlaschi, and R. Sauvageau, 1981: The relationship between mesoscale thermodynamic variables and convective precipitation. J. Atmos. Sci., 38, 1535-1540.
67. Zhang, H., A. Henderson-Sellers, A. J. Pitman, J. L. McGregor, C. E. Desborough, and J. J. Katzfey, 2001: Limited-area model sensitivity to the complexity of representation of the land surface energy balance. J. Climate, 14, 3965-3986.
68. Zheng, Y. Q., G. Yu, Y. F. Qian, M. Q. Miao, X. M. Zeng, and H. Q. Liu, 2002: Simulations of regional climatic effects of vegetation change in China. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 128, 2089-2114.
69. Ziv, B., H. Saaroni, and P. Alpert, 2004: The factors governing the summer regime of the eastern Mediterranean. Int. J. Climatol., 24, 1859-1871.