%0 Journal Article
%T Regional Climate Variability Responses to Future Land Surface Forcing in the Brazilian Amazon
%A Tao Zhang
%A Jinyan Zhan
%A Feng Wu
%A Jiao Luo
%A Juan Huang
%J Advances in Meteorology
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/852541
%X Tropical deforestation could destabilize regional climate changes. This paper aimed to model the potential climatological variability caused by future forest vulnerability in the Brazilian Amazon over the 21th century. The underlying land surface changes between 2005 and 2100 are first projected based on the respectable output produced by Hurtt et al. Then the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model is applied to assess the impacts of future deforestation on regional climate during 2090¨C2100. The study results show that the forests in the Brazilian Amazon will primarily be converted into dryland cropland and pasture in the northwest part and into cropland/woodland mosaic in the southeast part, with 5.12% and 13.11%, respectively. These land surface changes will therefore lead to the significant reduction of the sum of sensible heat flux and latent heat flux and precipitation and the increase of the surface temperature. Furthermore, the variability of surface temperature is observed with close link to the deforested areas. 1. Introduction Anthropogenic climate changes have attracted worldwide concerns. The coupling mechanism between land surface vulnerability and hydrological and climatological variability has been increasingly investigated and assessed during the last decades [1¨C4]. Generally, changing in human dominated land use or natural vegetation covers has affected the climate conditions through biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes, by shifting the surface energy, thermodynamic momentum, moisture budget, and atmospheric components [5¨C9]. Large-scale land conversions, such as unprecedented urban area expansion [10, 11], intensified agricultural activities [12, 13], and high tropical and boreal deforestation rate [14], are mainly caused by the human land use practices directly or indirectly, which is to meet the demand of human immediate necessities [15¨C20]. As a result, these land conversions have had great corresponding repercussions on climate anomalies at different scales, as well as other adverse effects in terms of biodiversity decline, ecosystem degradation, and economic loss [21]. Though most current global climate concerns are focused on the first-order external forcing [22], such as the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) which primarily originated from the fossil fuels combustion and anthropogenic land use practices, the land surface changes which have influenced or will influence natural climate variability in history, current, and future have fascinated diverse community of scholars [23]. Forests, covering more than 30% of
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2013/852541/