Author(s): Jeong-Bae Kim; Seon-Ho Kim

Linked Author(s): Jeong-Bae Kim

Keywords: Rid climate; Climate change; Drought; Global warming; Asia region

Abstract: Global warming has enhanced as a result of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the preindustrial (PI) period. Global warming impacts the temporal and spatial patterns of regional climate, and consequently, it is likely to shift climate to arid climate worldwide. Especially, Asia is highly vulnerable to changes in climate patterns due to monsoon effects and rapid population growth. However, understanding the influence of potential global warming on shifting to arid climates in the region is still challenging. The aims of this study are to estimate the shifting climate zone to arid climate zone and to examine the change in drought characteristics in this zone over Asia in response to the different degrees of warming from 1.5°C to 3.0°C above PI levels. To estimate potential global warming conditions, the climate scenarios are derived from multi-model ensemble projections of earth system models (ESMs) forced by shared socio-economic pathway (SSP5-8.5) scenario. ESMs are used for simulating future climate scenarios in Asia and fed into a meteorological input for classifying the climate zone after removing systematic bias. The climate classification method is applied to investigate the regional climate features (e.g., types and spatial boundary) and examine the changes in climate features responding to potential global warming conditions. Then, the drought characteristics (frequency and severity) are analyzed considering the shifting climate zone based on the standardized precipitation index. Global warming impacts the regional climate features across the Asian region. Although the change patterns in each climate zone are different, climate shifts in this region to arid climate are intensified under a higher level of global warming. In addition, the spatial variation of drought features in the shifting climate zone will be changed. This study demonstrates that regional climate can modulate arid climate zone and regional drought features under future global warming conditions.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC2521711920221021

Year: 2022