Compensatory climate effects link trends in global runoff to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration

Yang, Hui ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6454-8954; Huntingford, Chris ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5941-7770; Wiltshire, Andy; Sitch, Stephen; Mercado, Lina ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4069-0838. 2019 Compensatory climate effects link trends in global runoff to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. Environmental Research Letters, 14 (12), 124075. 12, pp. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab5c6f

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Abstract/Summary

River runoff is a key attribute of the land surface, that additionally has a strong influence on society by the provision of freshwater. Yet various environmental factors modify runoff levels, and some trends could be detrimental to humanity. Drivers include elevated CO2 concentration, climate change, aerosols and altered land-use. Additionally, nitrogen deposition and tropospheric ozone changes influence plant functioning, and thus runoff, yet their importance is less understood. All these effects are now included in the JULES-CN model. We first evaluate runoff estimates from this model against 42 large basin scales, and then conduct factorial simulations to investigate these mechanisms individually. We determine how different drivers govern the trends of runoff over three decades for which data is available. Numerical results suggest rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is the most important contributor to the global mean runoff trend, having a significant mean increase of +0.18 ± 0.006 mm yr−2 and due to the overwhelming importance of physiological effects. However, at the local scale, the dominant influence on historical runoff trends is climate in 82% of the global land area. This difference is because climate change impacts, mainly due to precipitation changes, can be positive (38% of global land area) or negative (44% of area), depending on location. For other drivers, land use change leads to increased runoff trends in wet tropical regions and decreased runoff in Southeast China, Central Asia and the eastern USA. Modelling the terrestrial nitrogen cycle in general suppresses runoff decreases induced by the CO2 fertilization effect, highlighting the importance of carbon–nitrogen interactions on ecosystem hydrology. Nitrogen effects do, though, induce decreasing trend components for much of arid Australia and the boreal regions. Ozone influence was mainly smaller than other drivers.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab5c6f
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Hydro-climate Risks (Science Area 2017-) Unaffiliated
ISSN:	1748-9326
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open Access paper - full text available via Official URL link.
NORA Subject Terms:	Meteorology and Climatology Atmospheric Sciences
Date made live:	19 Dec 2019 11:24 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/526316

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