Impact of enhanced forest conditions on the regional weather over central India using NU-WRF

Autor: A. Chandrasekar, Goriparthi Pavani
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Theoretical and Applied Climatology. 146:1189-1206
ISSN: 1434-4483
0177-798X
Popis: Human-induced land use land cover changes particularly from forestland to cropland and pastures have increased over the times in tropical regions. The present study aims to understand the impact of enhanced forest conditions on regional weather over central India using a coupled land-atmospheric model in NASA-Unified WRF (NU-WRF) system during monsoon and post-monsoon seasons for the year 2013. In this study, two sets of simulations were carried out over the Indian region: (i) Control (Ctl) run that represents the cropland (normal) scenario and (ii) experimental (Exp) run that represents enhanced forest conditions, where the cropland cover was replaced by evergreen broadleaf forest over the targeted region(central India). Enhanced forest conditions resulted in a decrease of near-surface (2 m) air temperature and an increase in near-surface (2 m) specific humidity during both the seasons, which is attributed to an increase in latent heat flux and a decrease in sensible heat flux. An increase of surface roughness length due to enhanced forest conditions led to a reduction in low-level winds during both the seasons. An increase in both moisture convergence and evapotranspiration led to an increase in precipitation during the monsoon season, while an increase in moisture divergence led to a slight decrease in precipitation during the post-monsoon season. Furthermore, the effect of enhanced forest conditions on regional weather, except for precipitation and low-level circulation patterns, is more pronounced during the post-monsoon season than during the monsoon season.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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