Diminishing seasonality of subtropical water availability in a warmer world dominated by soil moisture–atmosphere feedbacks

Zhou, Sha; Williams, A. Park; Lintner, Benjamin R.; Findell, Kirsten L.; Keenan, Trevor F.; Zhang, Yao; Gentine, Pierre

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-33473-9

Diminishing seasonality of subtropical water availability in a warmer world dominated by soil moisture–atmosphere feedbacks

Journal Article · Fri Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33473-9· OSTI ID:1902680

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Beijing Normal University (China)
Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ (United States)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Peking Univ., Beijing (China)
Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering

Global warming is expected to cause wet seasons to get wetter and dry seasons to get drier, which would have broad social and ecological implications. However, the extent to which this seasonal paradigm holds over land remains unclear. Here we examine seasonal changes in surface water availability (precipitation minus evaporation, P–E) from CMIP5 and CMIP6 projections. While the P–E seasonal cycle does broadly intensify over much of the land surface, ~20% of land area experiences a diminished seasonal cycle, mostly over subtropical regions and the Amazon. Using land–atmosphere coupling experiments, we demonstrate that 63% of the seasonality reduction is driven by seasonally varying soil moisture (SM) feedbacks on P–E. Declining SM reduces evapotranspiration and modulates circulation to enhance moisture convergence and increase P–E in the dry season but not in the wet season. Our results underscore the importance of SM–atmosphere feedbacks for seasonal water availability changes in a warmer climate.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; SC0021023

OSTI ID:: 1902680

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 13; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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