Regional Climate Feedbacks from Land Use Changes in Southeast Asia: A Sensitivity Study Using RegCM 4.1

Many observational and modeling studies have demonstrated the strong links between land use change and climate, and anthropogenic alterations of the land surface are now recognized to have consequences at the local, regional, and global scales.  However, the effects of such changes on the local and regional climate system are not well understood, but are critical to understanding future regional climate change. In Southeast Asia, which has experienced rapid anthropogenic land use change in the 20th Century, shifts in precipitation patterns in response to these changes have been documented from observational data.  Most climate modeling studies of the Southeast Asian region have employed low-resolution general circulation models and regional modeling studies have focused on land use change feedbacks on timescales of weeks to months.  This study employs a high-resolution regional climate model centered on the Southeast Asian region to compare two modeled climate scenarios: one with natural potential vegetation and one with modern land use as land cover.  Changes in surface temperature and precipitation between the two model scenarios will be assessed, and the results of this study will also be compared to previous modeling studies of climate sensitivity to land use change in North America, where surface cooling is shown to have resulted from the historic shift from natural vegetation to agriculture.