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Drylands face potential threat under 2 °C global warming target

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 417–422 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Paris Agreement aims to limit global mean surface warming to less than 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels1,2,3. However, we show this target is acceptable only for humid lands, whereas drylands will bear greater warming risks. Over the past century, surface warming over global drylands (1.2–1.3 °C) has been 20–40% higher than that over humid lands (0.8–1.0 °C), while anthropogenic CO2 emissions generated from drylands (∼230 Gt) have been only ∼30% of those generated from humid lands (∼750 Gt). For the twenty-first century, warming of 3.2–4.0 °C (2.4–2.6 °C) over drylands (humid lands) could occur when global warming reaches 2.0 °C, indicating ∼44% more warming over drylands than humid lands. Decreased maize yields and runoff, increased long-lasting drought and more favourable conditions for malaria transmission are greatest over drylands if global warming were to rise from 1.5 °C to 2.0 °C. Our analyses indicate that ∼38% of the world’s population living in drylands would suffer the effects of climate change due to emissions primarily from humid lands. If the 1.5 °C warming limit were attained, the mean warming over drylands could be within 3.0 °C; therefore it is necessary to keep global warming within 1.5 °C to prevent disastrous effects over drylands.

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Figure 1: Temperature trends and historical CO2 emissions for drylands and humid lands.
Figure 2: The comparison of warming amplification over different regions based on CMIP5 and three observational data sets.
Figure 3: The thermodynamic mechanisms of dryland-enhanced warming.
Figure 4: Differences of climate change impact between the GMSW of 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C.

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Acknowledgements

This work was jointly supported by the National Science Foundation of China (41521004), the China University Research Talents Recruitment Program (111 project, No. B13045) and the foundation of Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education in Lanzhou University. A.D. is supported by the US National Science Foundation (Grant #AGS–1353740), the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science (Award #DE–SC0012602), and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Award #NA15OAR4310086). The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP) Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals (GO-ESSP) for producing the CMIP5 model simulations and making them available for analysis. The authors also acknowledge NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, for providing NOAA Merged Air Land and SST Anomalies data and GPCC precipitation data from their website at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education, College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China

    Jianping Huang, Haipeng Yu, Yun Wei & Litai Kang

  2. Department of Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences, State University of New York at Albany, New York 12222, USA

    Aiguo Dai

  3. National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, Colorado 80307-3000, USA

    Aiguo Dai

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  1. Jianping Huang
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Contributions

J.H. and H.Y. are first co-authors. J.H. designed the study and contributed to the ideas, interpretation and manuscript writing. H.Y. and A.D. contributed to the data analysis, interpretation and manuscript writing. H.Y. and Y.W. conducted the data processing. All of the authors discussed and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianping Huang.

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Huang, J., Yu, H., Dai, A. et al. Drylands face potential threat under 2 °C global warming target. Nature Clim Change 7, 417–422 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3275

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