Global warming dominates regional effects of land-use change

(PhysOrg.com) -- Changes in snow and rain caused by global warming dominate the effects of land-use change on regional climates, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study by a team led by Professor Andy Pitman, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, found that land-use and land-cover changes tend to act as regional cooling mechanisms at mid to high latitudes but amplify warming in tropical regions. The Centre is hosted by the UNSW Faculty of Science.

However, it also found that larger climate change influences – particularly changes in regional precipitation caused by global warming - could override or significantly alter the size of those effects.

The findings are mostly significant for improving climate models, says Professor Pitman, a senior member of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre. The research team also includes researchers from the CSIRO Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research and the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, in France.

“This paper not only showed the influence of land use on regional climate, it emphasised exactly why we need to improve the way precipitation is represented in climate models,” Professor Pitman says.

“Currently we can show precipitation changes at global and continental level but projecting changes in precipitation down to regional scales as the planet warms remains one of the great challenges for climate researchers.

“Until we can accurately project this it will be difficult to determine exactly how much land-use and land-cover change amplifies or potentially reduces the regional effects of global warming.”

Regional precipitation is particularly difficult to project because of the lengthy chain of inter-related processes that occur within and outside these smaller areas to bring about rainfall, he says. Substantial, sustained research across a broad range of scientific disciplines is needed to meet this challenge.

“The Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science has been created to tackle exactly this kind of complex, long-term research,” he says.

“The extensive effort required to deliver foundation climate science of this nature is often limited due to the scale of expertise required – this is beyond the capacity of most single institutions.

“By bringing together a consortium of five universities along with major national and international partner organisations, the Centre has the capacity to take on this difficult and important research to strengthen and improve the building blocks of climate modelling.

“It is difficult research but it will have a direct impact on how Australian communities can prepare and adapt to the future challenges of climate change.”

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rubberman

3 / 5 (2) Nov 22, 2011

This is valuable work. Not only will land use affect regional climate, conversly regional climate will dictate land usage. Forcasting changes in precipitation patterns translates into predicting the availability for water to satisfy the needs of agriculture and urban populations.

GSwift7

2.6 / 5 (5) Nov 22, 2011

What do you mean rubberman? What exactly was the important work they did? The story was really vague about the actual work. The first four paragraphs briefly mention some link between regional precipitation and feedbacks and kinda repeats the title, but then the article goes off on two different tangents; one about some new organization and the other about climate models.

So, was the original study done with models then, or did they use ground or satellite data? I'm not even sure I trust thier stated conclusions, because the ARGOS floats in the tropical pacific have been showing that thunder storm cells act as natural dampeners on 24 hour temperature cycles. Warmer morning leads to bigger storms in the evening, and then cooler nights, and visa versa. We certainly aren't seeing as much warming in the tropics as we are seeing at higher latitudes. I think they have it backwards, don't they? Once again, we can look up other studies.

Davecoolman

2.5 / 5 (11) Nov 22, 2011

here we go Climatgate 2
I read with joy some of these emails, the idiots at CRU and there merry-band of data modifiers did not learn a thing from the Climatgate 1 fiasco. They are a conniving bunch of soon to be has been's.
And for those who will try to fluff these damming emails off you'd better read just a few to get a bad taste in your mouth, they are nuggets of pure gold that prove the CAGW warmist are starting to doubt themselves the temperature and the data - I think it's called scepticism!
Unfortunately for warmers and their faithful supporters they have pushed the there 4 wheels AGW show so far down a rocky road of deception, that Climatgate 1 punctured the first tire. Now this Climatgate 2 has punctured the second tire and the rest of the tires are running out of pressure.

See some more juicy stuff at Tallbloke:

http://tallbloke....arrived/

Vendicar_Decarian

2.5 / 5 (8) Nov 22, 2011

Ah, I see the Koch Brother army is out in full force today.

They have to find a way to cover up their BEST fiasco that used Koch money to produce real science rather than Koch anti-science Libertarian propaganda.

2.3 / 5 (9) Nov 22, 2011

Vendicar_Decarian
Your such a turdwarmer - you and the Physorg AGW editors/editors should take your heads out of the sand and read the emails then come back with you usual crap!!!

Your witnessing the beginning of the end of the doom and gloom crowd, jump into a lifeboat before you go down with the ship.

omatumr

2.3 / 5 (9) Nov 23, 2011

global warming dominate the effects of land-use change on regional climates, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

What garbage!

But good may result if collapse of the AGW fable finally forces the leaders of nations and scientific organizations to admit their total powerlessness over the explosive forces [1,2] that sustain life as an evolving process in a climate that continuously changes as the Sun itself evolves [3,4].

1. "Living with the Stormy Star", National Geographic Magazine (July 2004) http://ngm.nation...dex.html

2. "Our Explosive Sun", in press (2011)
http://curry.eas....taFe.pdf

3. "Origin and evolution of life: Constrains on solar models"
J Modern Physics 2, 587-594 (2011)
http://dl.dropbox...5079.pdf

4. Neutron Repulsion",
The APEIRON Journal, in press (2011)
http://arxiv.org/...2.1499v1

3 / 5 (2) Nov 23, 2011

@Gswift
It is important work in General, I didn't say that the ARC center team had done anything...yet. For example, Texans may want to know if they will be facing drought conditions on a more frequent basis in order to prepare, Bangkok may be interested in knowing if the conditions that caused intense flooding of 80% of the city are going to be a regualar occurance...Moscow may offer coupons for air conditioners...you know real world stuff. Got any?
The aticle states that the work being done is to help improve models...try reading it.
@ all of the mentally challenged denialists...shouldn't it set off some alarm bells that Oliver is on YOUR side of the fence? You know what they say...birds of a feather.....
I'd would explain the whole land use thing to you and the effect they describe, how it works and all that...but you can't explain to the ignorant why they are ignorant.

Doom1974

not rated yet Nov 23, 2011

Cranks galore today. Let's collectively ignore the cranks until steam comes out of their empty holes that they call heads.

jsdarkdestruction

3 / 5 (4) Nov 23, 2011

Oliver, do you not know of phase 2 of the plan? see kissinger and nixon knew about neutron repulsion and it being the main source of the suns and the universes power but chairman mao did not. as the world all followed their lead in the conspiracy they said it was to prevent nuclear war. however under the guise of that the united states had different reasons. as the climatoligists/scientists destroy our economy and power while funneling money to third world nations for supportung the scam the chinese will soon grow too strong and overpopulated for anyone but the us to even have a chance of stopping the chinese from taking over the world, at that moment neutron repulsion will be officially "discovered" and cheap easy neutron repulsion energy will be used both to power production of weapons and supplies and as weapons of mass destruction themselves in neutron repulsion bombs. saving the united states and allowing us to finally take over the whole world without looking like the bad guys...

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