Ecosystem Feedbacks to Climate Change in California: Development, Testing, and Analysis Using a Coupled Regional Atmosphere and Land Surface Model (WRF3-CLM3.5)

Earth Interactions

Volumn 15, Issue 15, 2011, Pages 1-38

  Subin, Z M ^a   Riley, W J ^a   Jin, J ^b   Christianson, D S ^c   Torn, M S ^a   Kueppers, L M ^d  

^a LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY   (United States)

^b UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Afforestation; Climate ecosystem feedbacks; Regional climate model

Indexed keywords

EID: 84856983656     PISSN: 00030007     EISSN: 10873562     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1175/2010EI331.1     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. Abatzoglou, J. T., K. T. Redmond, and L. M. Edwards, 2009: Classification of regional climate variability in the state of California. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 48, 1527-1541.
2. Abiodun, B. J., J. S. Pal, E. A. Afiesimama, W. J. Gutowski, and A. Adedoyin, 2008: Simulation of West African monsoon using RegCM3. Part II: Impacts of deforestation and desertification. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 93, 245-261.
3. Alo, C. A., and G. L. Wang, 2008: Hydrological impact of the potential future vegetation response to climate changes projected by 8 GCMs. J. Geophys. Res., 113, G03011, doi:10.1029/2007JG000598.
4. Bala, G., K. Caldeira, M. Wickett, T. J. Phillips, D. B. Lobell, C. Delire, and A. Mirin, 2007: Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104, 6550-6555.
5. Bell, J. L., and L. C. Sloan, 2006: CO2 sensitivity of extreme climate events in the western United States. Earth Interactions, 10. [Available online at http://EarthInteractions.org.]
6. Betts, R., P. Falloon, K. Goldewijk, and N. Ramankutty, 2007: Biogeophysical effects of land use on climate: Model simulations of radiative forcing and large-scale temperature change. Agric. For. Meteor., 142, 216-233.
7. Bonan, G. B., 1997: Effects of land use on the climate of the United States. Climatic Change, 37, 449-486.
8. Bonan, G. B., 1998: The land surface climatology of the NCAR Land Surface Model coupled to the NCAR Community Climate Model. J. Climate, 11, 1307-1326.
9. Bonan, G. B., 1999: Frost followed the plow: Impacts of deforestation on the climate of the United States. Ecol. Appl., 9, 1305-1315.
10. Bonan, G. B., 2008: Forests and climate change: Forcings, feedbacks, and the climate benefits of forests. Science, 320, 1444-1449.
11. Bonan, G. B., S. Levis, L. Kergoat, and K. W. Oleson, 2002a: Landscapes as patches of plant functional types: An integrating concept for climate and ecosystem models. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 16, 1021, doi:10.1029/2000GB001360.
12. Bonan, G. B., K. W. Oleson, M. Vertenstein, S. Levis, X. Zeng, Y. Dai, R. E. Dickinson, and Z.-L. Yang, 2002b: The land surface climatology of the Community Land Model coupled to the NCAR Community Climate Model. J. Climate, 15, 3123-3149.
13. Bonan, G. B., S. Levis, S. Sitch, M. Vertenstein, and K. W. Oleson, 2003: A dynamic global vegetation model for use with climate models: Concepts and description of simulated vegetation dynamics. Global Change Biol., 9, 1543-1566.
14. Bounoua, L., R. DeFries, G. J. Collatz, P. Sellers, and H. Khan, 2002: Effects of land cover conversion on surface climate. Climatic Change, 52, 29-64.
15. Brown, S., A. Dushku, T. Pearson, D. Shoch, J. Winsten, S. Sweet, and J. Kadyszewski, 2004: Carbon supply from changes in management of forest, range, and agricultural lands of California. California Energy Commission PIER Final Rep. 500-504-068F, 144 pp.
16. Caldwell, P., H. N. S. Chin, D. C. Bader, and G. Bala, 2009: Evaluation of a WRF dynamical downscaling simulation over California. Climatic Change, 95, 499-521.
17. California Native Plant Society, 2007: California Native Plant Society vegetation rapid assessment protocol. California Native Plant Society Rep., 11 pp. [Available online at http://www.cnps.org/cnps/vegetation/pdf/protocol-rapid_assess.pdf.]
18. Cayan, D. R., E. P. Maurer, M. D. Dettinger, M. Tyree, and K. Hayhoe, 2008: Climate change scenarios for the California region. Climatic Change, 87, S21-S42.
19. 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.
20. Chen, S., and W. Sun, 2002: A one-dimensional time dependent cloud model. J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 80, 99-118.
21. Chin, H.-N. S., P. M. Caldwell, and D. C. Bader, 2009: Exploration of California wintertime model wet bias: Sensitivity of WRF physics and measurement uncertainty. WRF Users Workshop, Boulder, CO, NCAR, 5B.7. [Available online at http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/workshops/WS2009/abstracts/5B-07.pdf.]
22. Chou, M.-D., and M. J. Suarez, 1994: An efficient thermal infrared radiation parameterization for use in general circulation models. NASA Tech. Memo. 104606, 85 pp.
23. Collins, W. D., and Coauthors, 2006: The Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3). J. Climate, 19, 2122-2143.
24. Cooley, H. S., W. J. Riley, M. S. Torn, and Y. He, 2005: Impact of agricultural practice on regional climate in a coupled land surface mesoscale model. J. Geophys. Res., 110, D03113, doi:10.1029/2004JD005160.
25. Dai, Y. J., R. E. Dickinson, and Y. P. Wang, 2004: A two-big-leaf model for canopy temperature, photosynthesis, and stomatal conductance. J. Climate, 17, 2281-2299.
26. Daly, C., M. Halbleib, J. I. Smith, W. P. Gibson, M. K. Doggett, G. H. Taylor, J. Curtis, and P. P. Pasteris, 2008: Physiographically sensitive mapping of climatological temperature and precipitation across the conterminous United States. Int. J. Climatol., 28, 2031-2064.
27. Davis, F. W., and Coauthors, 1998: California Gap Analysis Project. University of California, Santa Barbara Biogeography Lab Final Rep. [Available online at http://www.biogeog.ucsb.edu/projects/gap/gap_rep.html.]
28. DeFries, R. S., L. Bounoua, and G. J. Collatz, 2002: Human modification of the landscape and surface climate in the next fifty years. Global Change Biol., 8, 438-458.
29. Delworth, T., and Coauthors, 2006: GFDL's CM2 global coupled climate models. Part I: Formulation and simulation characteristics. J. Climate, 19, 643-674.
30. Denning, A. S., M. Nicholls, L. Prihodko, I. Baker, P. L. Vidale, K. Davis, and P. Bakwin, 2003: Simulated variations in atmospheric CO2 over a Wisconsin forest using a coupled ecosystematmosphere model. Global Change Biol., 9, 1241-1250.
31. Dickinson, R. E., K. W. Oleson, G. Bonan, F. Hoffman, P. Thornton, M. Vertenstein, Z.-L. Yang, and X. Zeng, 2006: The Community Land Model and its climate statistics as a component of the Community Climate System Model. J. Climate, 19, 2302-2324.
32. Diffenbaugh, N. S., 2005: Atmosphere-land cover feedbacks alter the response of surface temperature to CO2 forcing in the western United States. Climate Dyn., 24, 237-251.
33. Diffenbaugh, N. S., 2009: Influence of modern land cover on the climate of the United States. Climate Dyn., 33, 945-958.
34. Durieux, L., L. A. T. Machado, and H. Laurent, 2003: The impact of deforestation on cloud cover over the Amazon arc of deforestation. Remote Sens. Environ., 86, 132-140.
35. Feddema, J., K. Oleson, G. Bonan, L. Mearns, W. Washington, G. Meehl, and D. Nychka, 2005a: A comparison of a GCM response to historical anthropogenic land cover change and model sensitivity to uncertainty in present-day land cover representations. Climate Dyn., 25, 581-609.
36. Feddema, J., K. W. Oleson, G. B. Bonan, L. O. Mearns, L. E. Buja, G. A. Meehl, and W. M. Washington, 2005b: The importance of land-cover change in simulating future climates. Science, 310, 1674-1678.
37. Feng, X., A. Sahoo, K. Arsenault, P. Houser, Y. Luo, and T. J. Troy, 2008: The impact of snow model complexity at three CLPX sites. J. Hydrometeor., 9, 1464-1481.
38. Foley, J. A., M. H. Costa, C. Delire, N. Ramankutty, and P. K. Snyder, 2003: Green surprise? How terrestrial ecosystems could affect Earth's climate. Front. Ecol. Environ, 1, 38-44.
39. 4MIP model intercomparison. J. Climate, 19, 3337-3353.
40. Gallus, W. A., and J. F. Bresch, 2006: Comparison of impacts of WRF dynamic core, physics package, and initial conditions on warm season rainfall forecasts. Mon. Wea. Rev., 134, 2632-2641.
41. Ge, J. J., J. G. Qi, B. M. Lofgren, N. Moore, N. Torbick, and J. M. Olson, 2007: Impacts of land use/ cover classification accuracy on regional climate simulations. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D05107, doi:10.1029/2006JD007404.
42. Gibbard, S., K. Caldeira, G. Bala, T. Phillips, and M. Wickett, 2005: Climate effects of global land cover change. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23705, doi:10.1029/2005GL024550
43. Giorgi, F., and C. Shields, 1999: Tests of precipitation parameterizations available in latest version of NCAR regional climate model (RegCM) over continental United States. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 6353-6375.
44. Grubisic, V., R. K. Vellore, and A. W. Huggins, 2005: Quantitative precipitation forecasting of wintertime storms in the Sierra Nevada: Sensitivity to the microphysical parameterization and horizontal resolution. Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 2834-2859.
45. Hayhoe, K., and Coauthors, 2004: Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 101, 12422-12427.
46. Henderson-Sellers, A., P. Irannejad, K. McGuffie, and A. J. Pitman, 2003: Predicting land-surface climates-Better skill or moving targets? Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1777, doi:10.1029/2003GL017387.
47. Hong, S., Y. Noh, and J. Dudhia, 2006: A new vertical diffusion package with an explicit treatment of entrainment processes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 134, 2318-2341.
48. Hughes, M. K., and H. F. Diaz, 2008: Climate variability and change in the drylands of western North America. Global Planet. Change, 64, 111-118.
49. Jackson, R. B., and Coauthors, 2005: Trading water for carbon with biological sequestration. Science, 310, 1944-1947.
50. Jackson, R. B., and Coauthors, 2008: Protecting climate with forests. Environ. Res. Lett., 3, 044006, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/4/044006.
51. Jin, J. M., and N. L. Miller, 2007: Analysis of the impact of snow on daily weather variability in mountainous regions using MM5. J. Hydrometeor., 8, 245-258.
52. Johns, T. C., and Coauthors, 2003: Anthropogenic climate change for 1860 to 2100 simulated with the HadCM3 model under updated emissions scenarios. Climate Dyn., 20, 583-612.
53. Juang, J.-Y., G. Katul, M. Siqueira, P. Stoy, and K. Novick, 2007: Separating the effects of albedo from eco-physiological changes on surface temperature along a successional chronosequence in the southeastern United States. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L21408, doi:10.1029/2007GL031296.
54. Kain, J., 2004: The Kain-Fritsch convective parameterization: An update. J. Appl. Meteor., 43, 170-181.
55. Kanamitsu, M., W. Ebisuzaki, J. Woollen, S.-K. Yang, J. J. Hnilo, M. Fiorino, and G. Potter, 2002: NCEP-DOE AMIP-II Reanalysis (R-2). Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 83, 1631-1643.
56. Kuchler, A. W., 1975: Potential natural vegetation of the conterminous United States. 2nd ed. American Geographical Society Special Publication 36, Map.
57. Kueppers, L. M., M. A. Snyder, and L. C. Sloan, 2007: Irrigation cooling effect: Regional climate forcing by land-use change. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L03703, doi:10.1029/2006GL028679.
58. Kueppers, L. M, and Coauthors, 2008: Seasonal temperature responses to land-use change in the western United States. Global Planet. Change, 60, 250-264.
59. Lamptey, B. L., E. J. Barron, and D. Pollard, 2005: Impacts of agriculture and urbanization on the climate of the northeastern United States. Global Planet. Change, 49, 203-221.
60. Lawrence, D., P. Thornton, K. Oleson, and G. Bonan, 2007: The partitioning of evapotranspiration into transpiration, soil evaporation, and canopy evaporation in a GCM: Impacts on landatmosphere interaction. J. Hydrometeor., 8, 862-880.
61. Lenihan, J. M., R. J. Drapek, D. Bachelet, and R. P. Neilson, 2003: Climate change effects on vegetation distribution, carbon stocks and fire regimes in California. Ecol. Appl., 13, 1667-1681.
62. Lenihan, J. M., D. Bachelet, R. P. Neilson, and R. Drapek, 2008: Response of vegetation distribution, ecosystem productivity, and fire to climate change scenarios for California. Climatic Change, 87, S215-S230.
63. Leung, L., Y. Qian, X. Bian, W. Washington, J. Han, and J. Roads, 2004: Mid-century ensemble regional climate change scenarios for the western United States. Climatic Change, 62, 75-113.
64. Lobell, D. B., C. Bonfils, and J. M. Faures, 2008a: The role of irrigation expansion in past and future temperature trends. Earth Interactions, 12. [Available online at http://EarthInteractions.org.]
65. Lobell, D. B., C. Bonfils, L. M. Kueppers, and M. A. Snyder, 2008b: Irrigation cooling effect on temperature and heat index extremes. Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L09705, doi:10.1029/2008GL034145.
66. McPherson, R. A., 2007: A review of vegetation-atmosphere interactions and their influences on mesoscale phenomena. Prog. Phys. Geogr., 31, 261-285.
67. Michelson, S. A., and J. W. Bao, 2008: Sensitivity of low-level winds simulated by the WRF model in California's Central Valley to uncertainties in the large-scale forcing and soil initialization. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 47, 3131-3149.
68. Miller, N. L., and Coauthors, 2009: An analysis of simulated California climate using multiple dynamical and statistical techniques. California Climate Change Center Paper CEC-500-2009-017-D, 47 pp.
69. Mlawer, E., S. Taubman, P. Brown, M. Iacono, and S. Clough, 1997: Radiative transfer for inhomogeneous atmospheres: RRTM, a validated correlated-k model for the longwave. J. Geophys. Res., 102, 16663-16682.
70. Nakicenovic, N., and R. Swart, Eds., 2000: Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. Cambridge University Press, 570 pp.
71. Narisma, G. T., and A. J. Pitman, 2006: Exploring the sensitivity of the Australian climate to regional land-cover-change scenarios under increasing CO2 concentrations and warmer. Earth Interactions, 10. [Available online at http://EarthInteractions.org.]
72. Notaro, M., S. Vavrus, and Z. Y. Liu, 2007: Global vegetation and climate change due to future increases in CO2 as projected by a fully coupled model with dynamic vegetation. J. Climate, 20, 70-90.
73. Oleson, K. W., G. B. Bonan, C. Schaaf, F. Gao, Y. F. Jin, and A. Strahler, 2003: Assessment of global climate model land surface albedo using MODIS data. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1443, doi:10.1029/2002GL016749.
74. Oleson, K. W., and Coauthors, 2004: Technical Description of the Community Land Model (CLM). National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR/TN 4611STR.
75. Oleson, K. W., and Coauthors, 2008: Improvements to the Community Land Model and their impact on the hydrological cycle. Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences, 113.
76. Pielke, R. A., and Coauthors, 2007: An overview of regional land-use and land-cover impacts on rainfall. Tellus B Chem. Phys. Meterol., 59, 587-601.
77. Pitman, A. J., 2003: The evolution of, and revolution in, land surface schemes designed for climate models. Int. J. Climatol., 23, 479-510.
78. Pongratz, J., L. Bounoua, R. S. DeFries, D. C. Morton, L. O. Anderson, W. Mauser, and C. A. Klink, 2006: The impact of land cover change on surface energy and water balance in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Earth Interactions, 10. [Available online at http://EarthInteractions.org.]
79. Qian, T. T., A. G. Dai, K. E. Trenberth, and K. W. Oleson, 2006: Simulation of global land surface conditions from 1948 to 2004. Part I: Forcing data and evaluations. J. Hydrometeor., 7, 953-975.
80. Ramankutty, N., C. Delire, and P. Snyder, 2006: Feedbacks between agriculture and climate: An illustration of the potential unintended consequences of human land use activities. Global Planet. Change, 54, 79-93.
81. Roy, S. B., and R. Avissar, 2002: Impact of land use/land cover change on regional hydrometeorology in Amazonia. J. Geophys. Res., 107, 8037, doi:10.1029/2000JD000266.
82. Roy, S. B., G. C. Hurtt, C. P. Weaver, and S. W. Pacala, 2003: Impact of historical land cover change on the July climate of the United States. J. Geophys. Res., 108, 4793, doi:10.1029/2003JD003565.
83. Sacks, W. J., B. I. Cook, N. Buenning, S. Levis, and J. H. Helkowski, 2009: Effects of global irrigation on the near-surface climate. Climate Dyn., 33, 159-175.
84. Sellers, P., 1985: Canopy reflectance, photosynthesis, and transpiration. Int. J. Remote Sens., 6, 1335-1372.
85. Sitch, S., and Coauthors, 2003: Evaluation of ecosystem dynamics, plant geography and terrestrial carbon cycling in the LPJ dynamic global vegetation model. Global Change Biol., 9, 161-185.
86. Skamarock, B., 2009: Monotonic and positive definite transport options in the ARW V3.1 release. Preprints, WRF Users Workshop, Boulder, CO, NCAR, 1.2.
87. Skamarock, W. C., and J. B. Klemp, 2008: A time-split nonhydrostatic atmospheric model for weather research and forecasting applications. J. Comput. Phys., 227, 3465-3485.
88. Skamarock, W. C., and Coauthors, 2008: A description of the Advanced Research WRF version 3. National Center for Atmospheric Research Tech. Note NCAR/TN-4751STR, 125 pp.
89. Snyder, M. A., and L. C. Sloan, 2005: Transient future climate over the western United States using a regional climate model. Earth Interactions, 9. [Available online at http://EarthInteractions.org.]
90. Snyder, M. A., J. L. Bell, L. C. Sloan, P. B. Duffy, and B. Govindasamy, 2002: Climate responses to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide for a climatically vulnerable region. Geophys. Res. Lett., 29, 1514, doi:10.1029/2001GL014431.
91. Snyder, M. A., L. C. Sloan, N. S. Diffenbaugh, and J. L. Bell, 2003: Future climate change and upwelling in the California Current. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1823, doi:10.1029/2003GL017647.
92. Snyder, P. K., C. Delire, and J. A. Foley, 2004a: Evaluating the influence of different vegetation biomes on the global climate. Climate Dyn., 23, 279-302.
93. Snyder, M. A., J. A. Foley, M. H. Hitchman, and C. Delire, 2004b: Analyzing the effects of complete tropical forest removal on the regional climate using a detailed three-dimensional energy budget: An application to Africa. J. Geophys. Res., 109, D21102, doi:10.1029/2003JD004462.
94. Steiner, A. L., J. S. Pal, F. Giorgi, R. E. Dickinson, and W. L. Chameides, 2005: The coupling of the Common Land Model (CLM0) to a regional climate model (RegCM). Theor. Appl. Climatol., 82, 225-243.
95. Steiner, A. L., J. S. Pal, S. A. Rauscher, J. L. Bell, N. S. Diffenbaugh, A. Boone, L. C. Sloan, and F. Giorgi, 2009: Land surface coupling in regional climate simulations of the West African monsoon. Climate Dyn., 33, 869-892.
96. Strack, J. E., R. A. Pielke, Sr, L. T. Steyaert, and R. G. Knox, 2008: Sensitivity of June near-surface temperatures and precipitation in the eastern United States to historical land cover changes since European settlement. Water Resour. Res., 44, W11401, doi:10.1029/2007WR006546.
97. Swann, A. L., I. Y. Fung, S. Levis, G. B. Bonan, and S. C. Doney, 2010: Changes in Arctic vegetation amplify high-latitude warming through the greenhouse effect. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 107, 1295-1300.
98. Thonicke, K., S. Venevsky, S. Sitch, and W. Cramer, 2001: The role of fire disturbance for global vegetation dynamics: Coupling fire into a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model. Global Ecol. Biogeogr., 10, 661-677.
99. Torn, M., and J. Harte, 2006: Missing feedbacks, asymmetric uncertainties, and the underestimation of future warming. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L10703, doi:10.1029/2005GL025540.
100. Washington, W., and Coauthors, 2000: Parallel climate model (PCM) control and transient simulations. Climate Dyn., 16, 755-774.
101. Weare, B. C., and H. Du, 2008: Modelling regional climate changes: Influences of recent global warming and irrigation in California. Int. J. Climatol., 28, 1201-1212.
102. Weiss, J. L., C. L. Castro, and J. T. Overpeck, 2009: Distinguishing pronounced droughts in the south-western United States: Seasonality and effects of warmer temperatures. J. Climate, 22, 5918-5932.
103. Winter, J. M., J. S. Pal, and E. A. B. Eltahir, 2009: Coupling of Integrated Biosphere Simulator to Regional Climate Model version 3. J. Climate, 22, 2743-2757.
104. Xu, X. K., F. Zhang, and J. K. Levy, 2007: The influence of land surface changes on regional climate in northwest China. Adv. Atmos. Sci., 24, 527-537.
105. Yang, Z. L., and R. E. Dickinson, 1996: Description of the Biosphere-Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) for the soil moisture workshop and evaluation of its performance. Global. Planet. Change, 13, 117-134.
106. Zhao, M., A. J. Pitman, and T. Chase, 2001: The impact of land cover change on the atmospheric circulation. Climate Dyn., 17, 467-477.