Identification

Title

Simulated impacts of irrigation on the atmospheric circulation over Asia

Abstract

We find that irrigation significantly affects Asian summer climate, according to model simulations using the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM3.0) coupled to the Community Land Model (CLM3.5). Irrigation over the major river basins in the Middle East and central Asia causes a decrease in sensible heat fluxes and an increase in latent heat fluxes in boreal summer. These changes in heat fluxes lead to a cooling of both the surface and the lower troposphere over the irrigated regions. This atmospheric cooling, in turn, results in a cooling of the layer-averaged temperature (thickness temperature) in the troposphere. The irrigation-induced cooling in the troposphere, therefore, significantly decreases the tropospheric geopotential height over the irrigated regions. Lower height in the upper troposphere alters the upper-level atmospheric circulation over the irrigated and surrounding regions in Asia. Cyclonic differences of atmospheric circulation are simulated around negative differences of height and positive differences of vorticity between the irrigated and control runs, and they result in a weakening of the upper-level anticyclonic circulation over the tropical to midlatitude African-Asian regions. These changes in atmospheric circulation lead to a weakening of the strong upper-level westerly jet (Asian jet) over eastern Europe, the Middle East, and central Asia in 40°N ~ 55°N. The irrigation impacts on the atmospheric circulation and Asian jet in boreal summer are supported by a comparison with observations.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7z60pnp

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

2011-04-21T00:00:00Z

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