Identification

Title

Simulated climatology and evolution of aridity in the 21st century

Abstract

Future changes in aridity, defined as the ratio of annual precipitation to potential evapotranspiration (PET), are analyzed using simulations from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Large Ensemble (LE) and the phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) during the period 1980–2080. Both CESM and CMIP5 ensembles can reproduce the observed temporal and spatial variability of aridity. On the interannual time scale, annual average PET is sensitive to the variability of relative humidity, net surface energy flux, and surface air temperature, while the precipitation variability is the dominant component of annual average aridity sensitivity. For the long-term trends, differences between the two ensembles illustrate that the impact of the internal variability is smaller than that of the model structural uncertainty with the trends from the CMIP5 ensemble of models having a much larger spread than those from the single-model CESM-LE. The annual mean aridity averaged over global land increases (becomes drier) by 6.4% in 2055–2080 relative to 1980–2005. Aridity trends differ by region in the ensemble mean. In the future, increasing precipitation leads to decreasing aridity over northwest China and central (or tropical) Africa, while decreasing precipitation leads to drying (increasing aridity) in the subtropics, northern and southern Africa, and the Amazon. Increases in PET can lead to increasing aridity even in regions with increasing precipitation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7hq4139

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-06-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact