From Roger Pielke Sr.
New Paper “Impacts Of Land Use Land Cover Change On Climate And Future Research Priorities” By Mahmood Et Al 2009
We have a new multi-authored paper that has been accepted. This paper illustrates the breadth and diversity of scientists who have concluded that land use/land cover change is a first order climate forcing.
The paper is
Mahmood, R., R.A. Pielke Sr., K.G. Hubbard, D. Niyogi, G. Bonan, P. Lawrence, B. Baker, R. McNider, C. McAlpine, A. Etter, S. Gameda, B. Qian, A. Carleton, A. Beltran-Przekurat, T. Chase, A.I. Quintanar, J.O. Adegoke, S. Vezhapparambu, G. Conner, S. Asefi, E. Sertel, D.R. Legates, Y. Wu, R. Hale, O.W. Frauenfeld, A. Watts, M. Shepherd, C. Mitra, V.G. Anantharaj, S. Fall,R. Lund, A. Nordfelt, P. Blanken, J. Du, H.-I. Chang, R. Leeper, U.S. Nair, S. Dobler, R. Deo, and J. Syktus,
2009: Impacts of land use land cover change on climate and future research priorities (PDF). Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., accepted.
The paper starts with the text
“Human activities have modified the environment for thousands of years. Significant population increase, migration, and accelerated socio-economic activities have intensified these environmental changes over the last several centuries. The climate impacts of these changes have been found in local, regional, and global trends in modern atmospheric temperature records and other relevant climatic indicators.”
In our conclusions, we write
“It is the regional responses, not a global average, that produce drought, floods and other societally important climate impacts.”
as well as make the following recommendations
“we recommend, as a start, to assess three new climate metrics:
1. The magnitude of the spatial redistribution of land surface latent and sensible heating (e.g., see Chase et al. 2000; Pielke et al. 2002). The change in these fluxes into the atmosphere will result in the alteration of a wide variety of climate variables including the locations of major weather features. For example, Takata et al. (2009) demonstrated the major effect of land use change during the period 1700-1850 on the Asian monsoon. As land cover change accelerated after 1850 and continues into the future, LULCC promises to continue to alter the surface pattern of sensible and latent heat input to the atmosphere.
2. The magnitude of the spatial redistribution of precipitation and moisture convergence (e.g., Pielke and Chase 2003). In response to LULCC, the boundaries of regions of wet and dry climates can change, thereby affecting the likelihood for floods and drought. This redistribution can occur not only from the alterations in the patterns of surface sensible and latent heat, but also due to changes in surface albedo and aerodynamic roughness (e.g., see Pitman et al. 2004; Nair et al. 2007).
3. The normalized gradient of regional radiative heating changes. Since it is the horizontal gradient of layer-averaged temperatures that force wind circulations, the alteration in these temperatures from any human climate forcing will necessarily alter these circulations. In the evaluation of the human climate effect from aerosols, for example, Matsui and Pielke (2006) found that, in terms of the gradient of atmospheric radiative heating, the role of human inputs was 60 times greater than the role of the human increase in the well-mixed greenhouse gases. Thus, this aerosol effect has a much more significant role on the climate than is inferred when using global average metrics. We anticipate a similar large effect from LULCC. Feddema et al. (2005), for example, have shown that global averages mask the impacts on regional temperature and precipitation changes. The above climate metrics can be monitored using observed data within model calculations such as completed by Matsui and Pielke (2006) for aerosols, as well as by using reanalyses products, such as performed by Chase et al (2000) with respect to the spatial pattern of lower tropospheric heating and cooling. They should also be calculated as part of future IPCC and other climate assessment multi-decadal climate model simulations.”
We also write
“With respect to surface air temperatures, for example, there needs to be an improved quantification of the biases and uncertainties in multi-decadal temperature trends, which remain inadequately evaluated in assessment reports such as from the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP 2006). We also recommend that independent committees (perhaps sponsored by the National Science Foundation) conduct these assessments.”
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Personal note: I am in the list of authors. I had an equal role with the other co-authors, resulting in the first climate science publication for which I am listed as an author. Note the sections in the PDF speaking of the issues with USHCN. – Anthony
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well deserved recognition, Anthony. Your publication will surely be referenced frequently.
Man also has made things for the better. Recently (the last 15 years) some deserts along the peruvian coast (deserts because of the cold Humboldt´s current which runs along the west pacific SA coast- interrupted once in a while by the El Nino counter current) were changed into cultivated areas by irrigating them. Its production, mainly asparagus, grapes, and chile for pizzas goes mainly to the USA. As a result weather is changing from totally dry to less dry having rain sometimes.
Well, congratulations Mr. Watts. You have now passed peer review.
I thought the statement you quoted thusly from NRC (2005) …
“…..the climatic effects from light-absorbing aerosols or land-use changes do not lend themselves to quantification using the traditional radiative forcing concept….. These challenges have raised the question of whether the radiative forcing concept has outlived its usefulness and, if so, what new climate change metrics should be used”…
is certainly odd. In the first place I’m not sure I believe it is correct. But isn’t this akin to saying that the outcomes from these sorts of metrics were not useful to the problem at hand in the first place? And perhaps global mean temperature isn’t either, and never really was. Are we starting over–hitting a reset?
🙂 So now when people complain “Watts doesn’t publish”, you can say “Huh? What the heck do you mean?” and point them to this! I bet you have more on the way, since you’ve been hinting at it! 🙂
I see David Legates was one of the authors to! He’s one of my heroes because of what he went through for speaking his mind as State Climatologist of Delaware. The Governor didn’t appreciate that…
In the early 1900’s we, in the U.S., “Rowcropped” approx. 400 Million Acres.
The number, now, is about 250 Million acres.
How would those two factoids fit in?
Anecdotal I know but interesting none the less.
For 11 years I lived in a large Asian country that straddles the equator. During the seventies two of the worlds largest islands were covered in tropical rainforest. Since then millions and millions of hectares of this virgin forest has been annihilated by legal logging companies, illegal loggers, intrusive human settlement caused by massive population increase and human started forest fires.
The tropical rain forest was built up on a layer of peat that took thousands of years to accumulate. The tree roots were emeshed inside the peat. The soil underneath is often not fit enough to support large flora growth. Often the peat is soaked and the trees themselves are often standing in “swampy conditions” . You could fly over these forests and see the water standing around the base of the trees. You could also jump up and down beside a large tree and it would rock back and forth due to the unstable peat. The peat layers are up to three to four metres deep.
While flying over these forests you could also observe the tree canopy hugging clouds formed by the self generating humid conditions.
Remove the forest and you remove the all other growth, the peat and the self generated climate.
The weather patterns have changed. The city I was based in has experienced never before recorded levels of heat waves. The moonsoon is sporadic. The amount of rainfall is still a constant amopunt it just falls in different patterns and locations.
A local governor was concerend about this local climate shift. The rice production in his area was suffering due to the sporadic nature of the rainfall. He contracted a U.S. consulatncy to investigate the problem. Deforestation was blamed. He then took out a program of reforestation – even I had a hand in it. However, planting a few trees against the removal of millions of hecatres of the original rain forest is fruitless.
Once the rainforest is gone the peat dries out and generally burns up. The tropical trees can never be grow again until the layer of peat is replaced- this process takes thousands of years of non human interuption.
This country straddles the equator for a couple of thousand kilometers. It would be interesting to know what influence the changing land weather patterns caused by deforestation has on the airflow following on to the equatorial Pacific.
Congratulations on your paper Mr. Watts. I am sure you will be welcomed into the scientific community for publishing your analysis. I also see that YouTube has overturned your DCMA attempt to block others for commenting on your scientific contributions. I see other popular climate blogs covered this story.
This is a good day for science.
Kum Dollison (18:14:40) : Not trying to factor in anything, but what makes that all the more remarkable is that yields of Wheat doubled and yields of Corn quintupled over that period!
Do you mean to tell me that replacing thousands of acres of forest with thousands of acres of pavement might have some effect on climate? Wow! And I though it was my incandescent light bulb.
Anthony
Very interesting. I noticed several years ago when flying over Canada in the winter that the vast tracts of farmland, even in the eastern provinces, had a much higher albedo due to snow on the ground when compared with the relatively dark forests that were in the same area.
So the effect certainly goes both ways.
I took pictures if you ever want them as it is striking the difference between the two areas in the same picture.
Well done, Anthony! Yay for you and for science today. And suggesting that radiative forcing models have outlived their usefulness sounds diplomatic to me!
And many more . . .
You are teasing us. When is the BIG PAPER on the Surface Stations Project coming out? My nails are down to nubs!
Kidding aside, Congrats and good luck defending your part against the ebbing tide of alarmism, which should begin as soon as the folks at RC read this paper.
Is CA down; No can reach from here; a TRACERT ends shy of the end address too …
.
.
Intuitively I think this is a very important paper.
In Australia, fire was used for thousands of years by aborigines to control their environment and hunt and gather. Australia was not the dry continent 60,000 years ago that it is today.
I suspect, large scale re-forestation would have a significant effect on “greening” Australia’s desert centre and, importantly, changing the local climate. But we have no will and no green groups agitating to do that.
We are only interested in shutting down coal fired industry by taxing them out of existence.
“Personal note: I am in the list of authors. I had an equal role with the other co-authors, resulting in the first climate science publication for which I am listed as an author.”
Well done Anthony – I bet this feels pretty good.
As for the big one, your surface station project, there is a doctorate’s worth in that for you. (In fact, Prof. Bob Carter said that you should get a Nobel Prize for it in a video I saw!)
Doc Dubya. That would be too cool.
#B^1
H (19:44:16) :
“I suspect, large scale re-forestation would have a significant effect on “greening” Australia’s desert centre and, importantly, changing the local climate. But we have no will and no green groups agitating to do that. ”
Well, if they ever get round to planting trees in Oz, give me a shout and I’ll be over to help. I planted trees for a few years in Scotland – it was the best job I ever had! Loved it! – planted about a million I reckon! My record was 4000 in one day. (Mind you, this was back in about 1984 and a lot of beer has gone under the bridge since then…)
This is a good paper and congratulations to Anthony.
What has always gored me is that the climate models can build in a -0.1C impact for land-use and a -0.6C impact for Aerosols (through their impact on the planet’s albedo in effect), yet the same climate models (modelers) can’t bring themselves to build in a bigger effect for the albedo effect of glaciation during the ice ages – that the models/modelers cannot accept the Urban Heat Island has introduced a bias in the measured temperatures.
A little smoke from southern california has the same impact as a snow-covered glacier over half of Europe / crop-land in southern California is included in the models but not the Urban Heat Island produced by 25 million people.
The models (modelers) are always forced into a “GHGs/CO2 means everything” frame because that is their assumption from the beginning – anything that contradicts that has to be averaged away/written out of the code.
Land-use might be an overall negative to the actual whole-Earth temperature trend, but the way it is measured (in cities for the most part), the Urban Heat Island has introduced a bias in the measured temperature trend. It is time to remove that bias.
Who is this A. Watts guy? Just kidding. Congratulations Anthony for the first of more to come papers that will make your work and data “peer reviewed relevant” to the science.
The question is really is this different than UHI and is it enough to drive climatic shifts or just to influence local temperatures -i.e. temperature is not climate despite the AGW simplification-?
evanmjones (19:52:53) :
“Doc Dubya. That would be too cool.”
And there should be a mention in the dispatches for all the volunteers too. Fantastic work – all of you – I wish I’d been stateside and able to help out.
Well, I think no body can say something against your conclusions:
http://www.biocab.org/Desertification.html
Sorry for my poor English. At the end of the article I included a pic of the “Evening in the Desert Plains”, which I think would compensate my grammar errors.
However, not only humans alter their environment. Every living being on this planet alters its environment until collapse.
The ecological balance is a myth.
Just an FYI for those interested. In the two upcoming papers related to surfacestations.org findings, a distance online collaboration tool is being used to craft the paper.
The distance separating the authors spans the CONUS, so it brings us all together and in focus that email and manuscripts just doesn’t offer.
– Anthony
Excellent work Anthony! And, of course, kudos to all of the other coauthors – hope to see more of these kinds of publications in the future.
Frank