Climate warming accelerates surface soil moisture drying in the Yellow River Basin, China
Climate warming accelerates surface soil moisture drying in the Yellow River Basin, China
Understanding the dynamic response of surface soil moisture (SSM; 0–7 cm) drying to rising temperature is vital to predict future changes in agricultural and hydrological drought. Here we use quantile regression to explore the scaling effects of 2-m air temperature on SSM (%/°C) of the driest month in 8 different land cover types in the Yellow River Basin by using temperature intervals and a sliding window approach. SSM decreases significantly with air temperature and decreases more rapidly in warmer conditions, except for plain field, suggesting that temperature has a greater effect on SSM-temperature scaling than land cover. For warmer conditions, scaling exhibits larger spatial heterogeneity, indicating that it is mainly affected by local factors. When SSM is moderate, the scaling is constrained by various factors, but mainly by temperature. Comparatively, the scaling is close to 0 when SSM is very high or very low. The study highlights that global warming effects on drought may be underestimated. The findings provide an important theoretical basis for effects of temperature on soil moisture and future drought prediction.
Climate change, Drought, Land cover, Quantile regression, Surface soil moisture, Temperature
Fan, Keke
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Slater, Louise
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Zhang, Qiang
a956c138-e3b3-4305-b8ce-8776c5e124f4
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Gentine, Pierre
de395e2e-9c0b-44da-8787-8a7e87d27e39
Sun, Shuai
20bc652c-b726-4583-80cf-9dc44dffc707
Wu, Wenhuan
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December 2022
Fan, Keke
913c9460-cd4f-4da0-a779-2518396a6c5d
Slater, Louise
10c50b7c-ae08-445e-b8fb-d815dbe28d58
Zhang, Qiang
a956c138-e3b3-4305-b8ce-8776c5e124f4
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Gentine, Pierre
de395e2e-9c0b-44da-8787-8a7e87d27e39
Sun, Shuai
20bc652c-b726-4583-80cf-9dc44dffc707
Wu, Wenhuan
d2c3bf1b-a605-45b8-9745-2103c8b1a191
Fan, Keke, Slater, Louise, Zhang, Qiang, Sheffield, Justin, Gentine, Pierre, Sun, Shuai and Wu, Wenhuan
(2022)
Climate warming accelerates surface soil moisture drying in the Yellow River Basin, China.
Journal of Hydrology, 615, [128735].
(doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128735).
Abstract
Understanding the dynamic response of surface soil moisture (SSM; 0–7 cm) drying to rising temperature is vital to predict future changes in agricultural and hydrological drought. Here we use quantile regression to explore the scaling effects of 2-m air temperature on SSM (%/°C) of the driest month in 8 different land cover types in the Yellow River Basin by using temperature intervals and a sliding window approach. SSM decreases significantly with air temperature and decreases more rapidly in warmer conditions, except for plain field, suggesting that temperature has a greater effect on SSM-temperature scaling than land cover. For warmer conditions, scaling exhibits larger spatial heterogeneity, indicating that it is mainly affected by local factors. When SSM is moderate, the scaling is constrained by various factors, but mainly by temperature. Comparatively, the scaling is close to 0 when SSM is very high or very low. The study highlights that global warming effects on drought may be underestimated. The findings provide an important theoretical basis for effects of temperature on soil moisture and future drought prediction.
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Accepted/In Press date: 10 October 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 8 November 2022
Published date: December 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This research has been financially supported by the Major Science and Technology Projects of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region , Grant No. 2020ZD0009 and the China National Key R&D Program , Grant No. 2019YFA0606900 . All authors declare no conflict of interest. Our cordial gratitude should also be extended to the editor, Prof. Dr. Emmanouil Anagnostou and Prof. Dr, Jesus Mateo, and anonymous reviewers for their professional and pertinent comments which are greatly helpful for further quality improvement of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords:
Climate change, Drought, Land cover, Quantile regression, Surface soil moisture, Temperature
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 475458
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475458
ISSN: 0022-1694
PURE UUID: 91d59d33-99e0-4790-bf33-41c795b5529c
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Date deposited: 20 Mar 2023 17:36
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:33
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Contributors
Author:
Keke Fan
Author:
Louise Slater
Author:
Qiang Zhang
Author:
Pierre Gentine
Author:
Shuai Sun
Author:
Wenhuan Wu
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