Impacts of Water Consumption in the Haihe Plain on the Climate of the Taihang Mountains, North China
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Hindawi Advances in Meteorology Volume 2018, Article ID 6280737, 15 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/6280737 Research Article Impacts of Water Consumption in the Haihe Plain on the Climate of the Taihang Mountains, North China Jing Zou ,1 Chesheng Zhan ,2 Ruxin Zhao,3 Peihua Qin ,4 Tong Hu,1 and Feiyu Wang5 1Institute of Oceanographic Instrumentation, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Qingdao 266001, China 2Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China 3Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China 4Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China 5School of Geography and Tourism, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China Correspondence should be addressed to Chesheng Zhan; [email protected] Received 2 August 2018; Revised 9 October 2018; Accepted 29 October 2018; Published 13 November 2018 Academic Editor: #eodore Karacostas Copyright © 2018 Jing Zou et al. #is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In this study, the RegCM4 regional climate model was employed to investigate the impacts of water consumption in the Haihe Plain on the local climate in the nearby Taihang Mountains. Four simulation tests of twelve years’ duration were conducted with various schemes of water consumption by residents, industries, and agriculture. #e results indicate that water exploitation and consumption in the Haihe Plain causes wetting and cooling of the local land surface and rapid increases in the depth of the groundwater table. #ese wetting and cooling effects increase atmospheric moisture, which is transported to surrounding areas, including the Taihang Mountains to the west. In a simulation where water consumption in the Haihe Plain was doubled, the wetting and cooling effects in the Taihang Mountains were enhanced but at less than double the amount, because a cooler land surface does not enhance atmospheric convective activities. #e impacts of water consumption activities in the Haihe Plain were more obvious during the irrigation seasons (primarily spring and summer). In addition, the land surface variables in the Taihang Mountains, e.g., sensible and latent heat fluxes, were less sensitive to the climatic impacts due to the water consumption activities in the Haihe Plain because they were strongly affected by local surface energy balance. 1. Introduction to decrease by 10.2 mm per decade, which is slightly less than the trend observed on the piedmont plain of these moun- #e Taihang Mountains, which extend over 400 km from tains, of 12.5 mm per decade [5]. north to south in North China, form a geographic boundary Numerous studies have investigated climatic changes between the Loess Plateau (to the west) and the North China in North China and have mainly attributed these changes Plain (to the east). Mountains and intermontane valleys lie to human activity [6–9]. For example, Jia et al. attributed to the west and north, and plains lie to the east and south the observed changes in water resources from 1961 to (Figure 1). A number of reservoirs in the Taihang Mountains 2000 to various factors and demonstrated that local are important water sources for North China. However, due human activity accounted for about 60% of the observed to long-term human exploitation and climatic changes, the changes [10]. Taihang Mountains suffer from soil erosion and vegetation For the Taihang Mountains, the most intense human degradation [1, 2]. activities occur in its eastern plains area, Haihe Plain, which During the past fifty years, significant drying and is in the northern part of the North China Plain. #e Haihe warming trends have been detected in North China [3, 4]. Plain is an important agricultural area in China and supports #e mean precipitation in the Taihang Mountains was found rapidly developing industries. According to the Urban 2 Advances in Meteorology Topography m the eastern Haihe Plain affects the climate of the western Taihang Mountains. 1800 45N #erefore, in this study, a series of water exploitation and 1600 consumption simulations were conducted by the regional 1400 climate model RegCM4, using data from 1996 to 2007. 1200 40N #rough the comparison of these simulations, we in- Taihang Mountains 1000 vestigated the effect of water consumption processes in the Haihe Plain 800 Haihe Plain on the spatiotemporal variability of the local 35N 600 climate of the Taihang Mountains. 400 200 2. Methodology 30N 0 2.1. Model Description. #e regional climate model used in 110E 120E this study, RegCM4, was developed by the International Figure 1: Topography of the simulation domain. #e Taihang Center for #eoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy [27]. RegCM4 Mountains and Haihe Plain are outlined in black. is a hydrostatic climate model with a sigma vertical co- ordinate. #ree convective precipitation schemes, Kuo, Grell and Emanuel, and a large-scale precipitation scheme, Statistical Yearbook of China 2000, the population density SUBEX, were available as simulation options. #e land and gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 in the Taihang surface models BATS (biosphere-atmosphere transfer 4 Mountains were 322 people per km and 239 × 10 scheme) and CLM (community land model) were available −2 yuan·km , respectively. #is compares with 687 people for use as land modules in RegCM4. 4 −2 per km and 530 × 10 yuan·km in the Haihe Plain [11]. #e In this study, version 3.5 of CLM was used. #e CLM dense population and industry in the Haihe Plain have model divides grid cells into multiple land units (glacier, induced a serious imbalance between water demands and wetland, vegetation, etc.). Vegetation units can be further surface water supplies [12–14]. Large amounts of ground- divided into 17 plant function types (PFTs) [28]. #e hy- water have been exploited for crop cultivation and industrial drological processes in CLM3.5 were obtained from a runoff development, leading to a rapidly dropping groundwater parameterization scheme with a simple groundwater model table and a series of eco-environmental crises [15–17]. developed by Niu et al. [29, 30]. Water consumption activities have been shown to en- #e RegCM4 model has been implemented around the hance evapotranspiration and reduce local temperature, and globe and demonstrated excellent climate simulation abil- moreover, increasing local water vapor from land may lead ities. For example, Wang et al. evaluated the monthly to more convection and further changes in atmospheric precipitation simulation of RegCM4 over the Tibetan Pla- circulation [18–22]. Numerous studies have investigated the teau using the station observation and TRMM (Tropical regional impacts of agricultural irrigation, which constitutes Rainfall Measurement Mission) data and found RegCM4/ a major proportion of water consumption. For example, CLM3.5 performed better than RegCM4/BATS in the sta- Saeed et al. applied the Max Planck Institute’s Regional tistical indices [31]. Ashfaq et al. used RegCM4 to dy- Model (REMO) and found that the irrigation over India namically downscale the historical and near-term future caused increased evapotranspiration and less westerlies outputs from 11 global climate models, in order to present entering into land from the Arabian Sea [23]. DeAngelis high-resolution ensemble projections of climatic changes et al. analyzed the precipitation observations in the Great over the continental United States [32]. Mbienda et al. Plains of the United States and found the increased compared the simulations performed by different convective evapotranspiration due to irrigation contributed to more schemes of RegCM4 over Central Africa and found the downwind precipitation [24]. Emanuel-MIT convective scheme showed better indices in For the Haihe Plain, Chen and Xie investigated the temperature and the Grell scheme with Arakawa–Schubert climatic effects of large-scale irrigation due to interbasin closure assumption was better to downscale precipitation water transfer and demonstrated that such irrigation causes and surface wind [33]. increased local precipitation and decreased temperature at the land surface [25]. Leng et al. revealed that the changes in topsoil moisture and subsurface water flux induced by 2.2. Water Exploitation Scheme Description. #e scheme of groundwater irrigation exceeded the potential change that water exploitation and consumption used in this study was could be attributed to various climate projections for the developed based on the CLM3.5 approach used in our pre- Haihe Plain [26]. #ese studies have made valuable progress vious studies [34, 35]. #e scheme relies on preset water in investigating the relationship between local climate demand and is composed of exploitation and consumption changes and water consumption activities. However, the components. As shown in Figure 2, the total water demand Dt extent of the effect of water consumption within the Haihe is supplied by water resources pumped from rivers (Qs) and Plain on its western water source area, the Taihang wells (Qg). #e total water demand Dt is consumed by three Mountains, remains unclear. Further discussion should consumption sections—irrigation consumption (Da), do- address the way in which high-level water consumption in mestic consumption (Dd), and industrial consumption (Di). Advances in Meteorology 3 Water consumption Evaporation Domestic D consumption