Industrial Ecology Programme, Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway.
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway.
Nat Commun. 2020 Feb 26;11(1):1066. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-14890-0.
Around 70 Mha of land cover changes (LCCs) occurred in Europe from 1992 to 2015. Despite LCCs being an important driver of regional climate variations, their temperature effects at a continental scale have not yet been assessed. Here, we integrate maps of historical LCCs with a regional climate model to investigate air temperature and humidity effects. We find an average temperature change of -0.12 ± 0.20 °C, with widespread cooling (up to -1.0 °C) in western and central Europe in summer and spring. At continental scale, the mean cooling is mainly correlated with agriculture abandonment (cropland-to-forest transitions), but a new approach based on ridge-regression decomposing the temperature change to the individual land transitions shows opposite responses to cropland losses and gains between western and eastern Europe. Effects of historical LCCs on European climate are non-negligible and region-specific, and ignoring land-climate biophysical interactions may lead to sub-optimal climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.
从 1992 年到 2015 年，欧洲约有 7000 万公顷的土地覆盖变化（LCCs）。尽管 LCCs 是区域气候变化的重要驱动因素，但它们在大陆尺度上的温度影响尚未得到评估。在这里，我们将历史 LCCs 图与区域气候模型相结合，以调查气温和湿度的影响。我们发现平均温度变化为-0.12±0.20°C，夏季和春季欧洲西部和中部普遍降温（高达-1.0°C）。在大陆尺度上，平均降温主要与农业弃耕（耕地向森林的转变）有关，但一种基于脊回归的新方法将温度变化分解为单个土地转变，显示出与欧洲西部和东部之间耕地损失和增加相反的响应。历史 LCCs 对欧洲气候的影响不可忽视且具有区域特异性，如果忽略土地-气候生物物理相互作用，可能会导致不理想的气候变化缓解和适应策略。
