Response of drylands' water-cycle to the global warming

Drylands occupy about 41% of land surface and feed 38% of the world's population, where understanding drylands' water-cycle is in urgent need. In this study, response of water-cycle over the drylands to global warming from 1980 to 2015 and its mechanisms have been investigated in detail. The results show that, with the global surface air temperature (SAT) increasing at a rate of 0.03 K.year(-1) over the drylands, an increased evaporation is found; however, the net water vapour transport over the global drylands appears an overall decreased rate of -0.24 mm.year(-1). Due to global warming and atmospheric circulation anomalies, the evaporation increases by 1.1 mm.year(-1), while the precipitation and runoff decrease by -2.32 and -0.8 mm.year(-1), respectively. In addition, the precipitation conversion rate (PCR) tends to decrease during this period, while the precipitation recycling rate (PRR) shows slightly increasing trend, implying a more dependence of the precipitation on the local evaporation over the drylands. Overall, except the drylands of Africa, it indicates a weakened water-cycle over the global drylands from 1980 to 2015. Though some findings have been revealed, there still remains some uncertainties due to the observation limitation on the water-cycle components. Therefore, a comprehensive study including multi-sourced data and model simulation is expected in the future.

Automated summary

The study investigates the response of water-cycle over global drylands to global warming from 1980 to 2015, showing a weakened water-cycle characterized by increased evaporation, decreased precipitation and runoff, and a greater dependence of precipitation on local evaporation.