@article{20cc24297dbc4cb7ade05f495b948e90,
title = "The sensitivity of land-atmosphere coupling to modern agriculture in the northern midlatitudes",
abstract = "Modern agricultural land cover and management are important as regional climate forcings. Previous work has shown that land cover change can significantly impact key climate variables, including turbulent fluxes, precipitation, and surface temperature. However, fewer studies have investigated how intensive crop management can impact background climate conditions, such as the strength of land-atmosphere coupling and evaporative regime. We conduct sensitivity experiments using a state-of-the-art climate model with modified vegetation characteristics to represent modern crop cover and management, using observed crop-specific leaf area indexes and calendars. We quantify changes in land-atmosphere interactions and climate over intensively cultivated regions situated at transitions between moisture- and energy-limited conditions. Results show that modern intensive agriculture has significant and geographically varying impacts on regional evaporative regimes and background climate conditions. Over the northern Great Plains, modern crop intensity increases the model simulated precipitation and soil moisture, weakening hydrologic coupling by increasing surface water availability and reducing moisture limits on evapotranspiration. In the U.S. Midwest, higher growing season evapotranspiration, coupled with winter and spring rainfall declines, reduces regional soil moisture, while crop albedo changes also reduce net surface radiation. This results overall in reduced dependency of regional surface temperature on latent heat fluxes. In central Asia, a combination of reduced net surface energy and enhanced pre-growing season precipitation amplify the energy-limited evaporative regime. These results highlight the need for improved representations of agriculture in global climate models to better account for regional climate impacts and interactions with other anthropogenic forcings.",
keywords = "Atmosphere-land interaction, Climate sensitivity, Feedback",
author = "Mcdermid, {Sonali Shukla} and Carlo Montes and Cook, {Benjamin I.} and Puma, {Michael J.} and Kiang, {Nancy Y.} and Igor Aleinov",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments. All data used in this study are publically accessible. Results from ModelE simulations are available upon written request to the corresponding author. C. Montes conducted this work through an appointment with the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, administered by Universities Space Research Association through a contract with NASA. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through [the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center and] the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at Goddard Space Flight Center. B.I. Cook and M.J. Puma both supported by the NASA Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction program, including NASA Grant NASA 80NSSC17K0265. The authors would also like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Larissa Nazarenko and Dr. Max Kelley for their overall contributions to the GISS model development effort and their contributions to model functionalities used herein. Funding Information: All data used in this study are publically accessible. Results from ModelE simulations are available upon written request to the corresponding author. C. Montes conducted this work through an appointment with the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, administered by Universities Space Research Association through a contract with NASA. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through [the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center and] the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at Goddard Space Flight Center. B.I. Cook and M.J. Puma both supported by the NASA Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction program, including NASA Grant NASA 80NSSC17K0265. The authors would also like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Larissa Nazarenko and Dr. Max Kelley for their overall contributions to the GISS model development effort and their contributions to model functionalities used herein. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 American Meteorological Society.",
year = "2019",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0799.1",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "32",
pages = "465--484",
journal = "Journal of Climate",
issn = "0894-8755",
publisher = "American Meteorological Society",
number = "2",
}