Soil moisture-evaporation coupling shifts into new gears under increasing CO2
Journal
Nature Communications
Journal Volume
14
Journal Issue
1
ISSN
2041-1723
Date Issued
2023-03-01
Author(s)
Dirmeyer, Paul A.
Abstract
When soil moisture (SM) content falls within a transitional regime between dry and wet conditions, it controls evaporation, affecting atmospheric heat and humidity. Accordingly, different SM regimes correspond to different gears of land-atmosphere coupling, affecting climate. Determining patterns of SM regimes and their future evolution is imperative. Here, we examine global SM regime distributions from ten climate models. Under increasing CO2, the range of SM extends into unprecedented coupling regimes in many locations. Solely wet regime areas decline globally by 15.9%, while transitional regimes emerge in currently humid areas of the tropics and high latitudes. Many semiarid regions spend more days in the transitional regime and fewer in the dry regime. These imply that a larger fraction of the world will evolve to experience multiple gears of land-atmosphere coupling, with the strongly coupled transitional regime expanding the most. This could amplify future climate sensitivity to land-atmosphere feedbacks and land management.
Subjects
carbon dioxide
climate change
climate feedback
climate modeling
evaporation
land-atmosphere interaction
soil moisture
wetting-drying cycle
SDGs
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Type
journal article