Please wait a minute...
Journal of Arid Land  2012, Vol. 4 Issue (2): 132-139    DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1227.2012.00132
Research Articles     
Effects of irrigation on precipitation in the arid regions of Xinjiang, China
Yong ZHAO1, YongJie FANG2, CaiXia CUI3, AnNing HUANG4
1 Institute of Desert Meteorology, China Meteorology Administration, Urumqi 830002, China;
2 Beijing Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China;
3 Xinjiang Meteorological Observatory, Urumqi 830002, China;
4 School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Download:   PDF(3708KB)
Export: BibTeX | EndNote (RIS)      

Abstract  Soil moisture is an important parameter for the interaction between soil and atmosphere. It is the second important factor that influences climate change, next to sea surface temperature (SST). Most previous studies focused on the monsoon regions in East China, and only a few laid emphases on arid environments. In Xinjiang, which is located in Northwest China, the climate is typically arid and semi-arid. During the past 20 years, the precipitation in Xinjiang has shown a significant increasing trend, and it is closely related to oasis irrigation. This paper aims at discussing whether abnormal soil moisture in spring can be the signal to forecast summer precipitation. The effects of abnormal soil moisture due to farm irrigation in spring in arid environments on regional climate are investigated by using a regional climate model (RegCM3). The results indicate that positive soil moisture anomaly in irrigated cropland surface in May led to an increase in precipitation in spring as well as across the whole summer. The impact could last for about four months. The effects of soil moisture on the surface air temperature showed a time-lagging trend. The summer air temperature declined by a maximum amplitude of 0.8ºC. The increased soil moisture could enhance evaporation and ascending motion in the low troposphere, which brought in more precipitation. The soil moisture affected regional weather and climate mainly by altering the surface sensible and latent heat fluxes.

Key wordsTibet      cryosphere      global warming      ecological environment     
Received: 14 September 2011      Published: 06 June 2012
Fund:  

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (40875010, 41005050), the Xinjiang Sci-ence and Technology Support Project (200891129), and the Global Change National Key Scientific Research Project (2011 CB952002).

Corresponding Authors: Yong ZHAO     E-mail: zhaoyong@idm.cn
Cite this article:

Yong ZHAO, YongJie FANG, CaiXia CUI, AnNing HUANG. Effects of irrigation on precipitation in the arid regions of Xinjiang, China. Journal of Arid Land, 2012, 4(2): 132-139.

URL:

http://jal.xjegi.com/10.3724/SP.J.1227.2012.00132     OR     http://jal.xjegi.com/Y2012/V4/I2/132

Barnston A G, Schickedanz P T. 1984. The effect of irrigation on warm season precipitation in the Southern Great Plains. Journal of Climate Applied Meteorology, 23(6): 865-888.
Barron E J. 1994. GOALS (Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System) for Predicting Seasonal-to-International Climate: A Program of Observation, Modeling, and Analysis. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
Davies H, Turner R. 1977. Updating precipitation models by dynamical relaxation: an examination of the technique. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 103(436): 225-245.
DeAngelis A, Dominguez F, Fan Y, et al. 2010. Evidence of enhanced precipitation due to irrigation over the Great Plains of the United Station. Journal of Geophysical Research, 115(D15): 1-14.
Du H W, Yan H. 1993. A numerical experiment of the influence of underlying surface on a short-range Synoptic process II. Chinese Quarterly Journal of Applied Meteorology, 4(4): 385-393.
Eddy J A, Stidd C K, Fowler W B, et al. 1975. Irrigation increases rainfall? Science, 188(4185): 279-281.
Grell G A, Dudhia J, Satuffer D R. 1994. A description of the Fifth-Generation Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5). In: National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR Technical Report Note TN-398. Colorado, USA.
Guo W D, Ma Z G, Yao Y H. 2003. Regional characteristics of soil moisture evolution in Northern China over recent 50 years. Acta Geographica Sinica, 58(suppl.): 83-90.
Henderson-Sellers A. 1996. Soil moisture: a critical focus for global change studies. Global and Planetary Change, 13(1-4): 3-9.
Holtslag A A M, De Bruijn E I F, Pan H L. 1990. A high resolusion air mass transformation model for short-range weather forecasting. Month Weather Review, 118: 1561-1575.
Kanamitsu M, Ebisuzaki W, Woollen J, et al. 2002. NCEP–DOE AMIP-II Reanalysis (R-2). Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 83(11): 1631-1643.
Kiehl J T, Hack J J, Bonan G B, et al. 1993. Description of the NCAR community climate model (CCM3). In: NCAR Technical Report Note TN-464. National Center for Atmospheric Research. Colorado, USA.
Lenters J D, Coe M T, Foley J A. 2000. Surface water balance of the continental Unite States, 1963-1995: regional evaluation of a terrestrial biosphere model and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. Journal of Geophysical Research, 105(D17): 22393-22425.
Li Q P, Ding Y H, Dong W J. 2007. A numerical study on the effects of the soil moisture upon the regional short-term climate. Journal of Applied Meteorological Science, 18(1): 1-11.
Ma Z G, Fu C B, Xie L, et al. 2001. Some problems in the study on the relationship between soil moisture and climatic change. Advance in Earth Sciences, 16(4): 563-568.
Moore N, Rojstaczer S. 2001. Irrigation-induced rainfall and the Great Plains. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 40(8): 1297-1309.
Namias J. 1958. Persistence of mid-tropospheric circulation between adjacent months and seasons. In: The Atmosphere and Sea in Motion (Rossby Memorial Volume). Oxford: Rockefeller Institute Press and Oxford University Press, 240-248.
Namias J. 1963. Surface-atmosphere interactions as fundamental causes of droughts and other climatic fluctuations. In: Symposium on Changes of Climate with Special Reference to Arid Zones. Paris: UNESCO Publication, 20: 345-359.
Pal J S, Eltahir E A, Small E E. 2000. Simulation of regional-scale water and energy budgets: representation of subgrid cloud and precipitation processes within RegCM. Journal of Geophysical Research, 105(D24): 29579-29594.
Roads J O, Chen S C, Kanamitsu M, et al. 1999. Surface water characteristics in NCEP global spectral model and reanalysis. Journal of Geophysical Research, 104(D16): 19307-19327.
Shi Y F, Shen Y P, Hu R J. 2002. Preliminary study on signal, impact and foreground of climatic shift from warm-dry to warm-humid in Northwest China. Chinese Journal of Glaciology and Geocryology, 24(3): 219-226.
Shukla J, Mintz Y. 1982. Influence of land-surface evapotranspiration on Earth’s climate. Science, 215(4539): 1498-1501.
Sun C H, Li W J, Zhang Z Q, et al. 2005. Impact of Huaihe River Basin soil temperature and humidity abnormality in pre-winter and spring time on the anomalous summer rainfall and its application. Acta Meteorologica Sinica, 63(1): 115-121.
Walker J, Rowntree P R. 1977. The effect of soil moisture on circulation and rainfall in a tropical model. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 103(435): 29-46.
Wang W Q. 1991. Numerical experiments of the soil temperature and moisture anomalies’ effects on the short term climate. Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 15(5): 115-123.
Xie Z Q, Liu J M, Ding Y G, et al. 2005. Variation features of soil temperature and moisture content at dry- and alpine-desertification surface and their interaction analyse. Plateau Meteorology, 24(1): 16-22.
Yang L M, Zhang Q Y. 2007. Circulation characteristics of interannual and interdecadal anomalies of summer rainfall in north Xinjiang. Chinese Journal of Geophysics, 50(2): 412-419.
Yeh T C, Wetherald R I, Manabe S. 1984. The effect of soil moisture on the short-term climate and hydrology change: a numerical experiment. Monthly Weather Review, 112(3): 474-490.
Zhang J B, Shi Y G. 2002. The Study on Climate Change and Short-term Climate Prediction in Xinjiang. Beijing: China Meteorological Press, 82-84.
Zhu Q G, Lan H P, Shen T L. 1996. Numerical study of the influence of soil moisture and surface albedo on climate of north part of China. Acta Meteorologica Sinica, 54(4): 493-500.
[1] YANG Junhuai, XIA Dunsheng, WANG Shuyuan, TIAN Weidong, MA Xingyue, CHEN Zixuan, GAO Fuyuan, LING Zhiyong, DONG Zhibao. Near-surface wind environment in the Yarlung Zangbo River basin, southern Tibetan Plateau[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2020, 12(6): 917-936.
[2] ZHANG Zhenchao, LIU Miao, SUN Jian, WEI Tianxing. Degradation leads to dramatic decrease in topsoil but not subsoil root biomass in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau, China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2020, 12(5): 806-818.
[3] Nadia KAMALI, Hamid SIROOSI, Ahmad SADEGHIPOUR. Impacts of wind erosion and seasonal changes on soil carbon dioxide emission in southwestern Iran[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2020, 12(4): 690-700.
[4] GUO Bing, ZANG Wenqian, YANG Fei, HAN Baomin, CHEN Shuting, LIU Yue, YANG Xiao, HE Tianli, CHEN Xi, LIU Chunting, GONG Rui. Spatial and temporal change patterns of net primary productivity and its response to climate change in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China from 2000 to 2015[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2020, 12(1): 1-17.
[5] Qinli XIONG, Yang XIAO, Waseem A HALMY Marwa, A DAKHIL Mohammed, Pinghan LIANG, Chenggang LIU, Lin ZHANG, PANDEY Bikram, Kaiwen PAN, B EL KAFRAWAY Sameh, Jun CHEN. Monitoring the impact of climate change andhuman activities on grassland vegetation dynamics in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateauof China during 2000-2015[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2019, 11(5): 637-651.
[6] BOMBI Pierluigi. Potential impacts of climate change on Welwitschia mirabilis populations in the Namib Desert, southern Africa[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2018, 10(5): 663-672.
[7] Zhengyi YAO, Xiaoying LI, Jianhua XIAO. Characteristics of daily extreme wind gusts on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2018, 10(5): 673-685.
[8] Hui TIAN, IQBAL Mudassar. Utilizing a new soil effective temperature scheme and archived satellite microwave brightness temperature data to estimate surface soil moisture in the Nagqu region, Tibetan Plateau of China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2018, 10(1): 84-100.
[9] WANG Haiming, SUN Jian, LI Weipeng, WU Jianbo, CHEN Youjun, LIU Wenhui. Effects of soil nutrients and climate factors on belowground biomass in an alpine meadow in the source region of the Yangtze-Yellow rivers, Tibetan Plateau of China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2016, 8(6): 881-889.
[10] YANG Zhaoping, GAO Jixi, YANG Meng, SUN Zhizhong. Effects of freezing intensity on soil solution nitrogen and microbial biomass nitrogen in an alpine grassland ecosystem on the Tibetan Plateau, China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2016, 8(5): 749-759.
[11] WANG Shengli, NAN Zhongren, Daniel PRETE . Protecting wild yak (Bos mutus) species and preventing its hybrid in China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2016, 8(5): 811-814.
[12] YANG Xuemei, LIU Shizeng, YANG Taibao, XU Xianying, KANG Caizhou, TANG Jinnian, WEI Huaidong, Mihretab G GHEBREZGABHER, LI Zhiqi. Spatial-temporal dynamics of desert vegetation and its responses to climatic variations over the last three decades: a case study of Hexi region in Northwest China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2016, 8(4): 556-568.
[13] ManHou XU, Fei PENG, QuanGang YOU, Jian GUO, XiaFei TIAN, Min LIU, Xian XUE. Effects of warming and clipping on plant and soil properties of an alpine meadow in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2015, 7(2): 189-204.
[14] JianHua XIAO, JianJun QU, ZhengYi YAO, YingJun PANG KeCun ZHANG. Morphology and formation mechanism of sand shadow dunes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2015, 7(1): 10-26.
[15] Yuan YAO, WeiGuo LIU. Hydrogen isotopic composition of plant leaf wax in response to soil moisture in an arid ecosystem of the northeast Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2014, 6(5): 592-600.