Comparison of Dryland Climate Change in Observations and CMIP5 Simulations.pdfVIP

ADVANCESIN ATMOSPHERICSCIENCES，VOL．32，NOVEMBER2015，1565—1574 ComparisonofDrylandClimateChangeinObservationsandCM IP5Simulations JIM ingxia，HUANG Jianping，XIEYongkun，andLIU Jun KeyLaboratoryforSemi-AridClimateChangeoftheMinistryofEducation，CollegeofAtmosphericSciences LanzhouUniversity,Lanzhou730000 (Received8December2014；revised30April2015；accepted6May2015) ABSTRACT Acompadsonofobservationswith20climatemodelsimulationsfromtheCoupledModelIntercomparisonProject，Phase 5fCMIP5)revealedthatobserveddrylandexpansionamountedto2．61×10。km duringthe58yearsfrom 1948to2005， whichwasfourtimeshigherthanthatinthesimulations(0．55×10。km )．Drylandexpansionwasaccompaniedbyadecline inaridityindex(AI)(dryingtrend)asaresultofdecreasedprecipitationandlncreasedpotentialevapotranspirationacross alldrylandsubtypeareasintheobservations，especiallyinthesemi—aridanddrysubhumidregions．However,theCMIP5 multi．modelensemblefMME1averageperformedpoorlywithregradtothedecreasingtrendsofAIandprecipitation．By analyzingthefactorscontrollingAI．wefoundthattheoverallbiasofAIinthesimulations，compraedwithobservations，was lragelyduetolimitationsinthesimulationofprecipitation．Thesimulatedprecipitationoverglobaldrylandswassubstantially overes；timatedcompraedwithobservationsacrossallsubtyperaeas，andthespatialdistributionofprecipitationintheMME waslargelyinconsistentintheAfricanSahel，EastAsia，andeastern Australia，wherethesemi—aridanddry subhumidregions weremainlylocated． Keywords：aridityindex，drylandexpansion，climatechange，CM IP5 Citation：Ji，M．X．，J．PHuang，Y K．Xie，andJ．Liu，2015：Compraisonofdrylna dclimatechnageinobservationsand CMIP5simulations．Adv．Atmos．Sci．，32(11)，1565—1574，doi：10．1007／s00376—015—4267—8． 1． Introductio