Hypothesis 1: The land cover and land use changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union were sufficiently extensive to affect the hydrometeorology of the semi-arid grain belt of Eurasia, inducing significant changes in energy and moisture exchange between land surface and atmosphere, thereby modifying regional patterns of precipitation and surface conditions.
- In our prior work we modeled NDVI as a function of accumulated GDD (AGDD base 0 oC).
- LSPs of agricultural areas fit well a quadratic model.
- We have previously established that there have been changes in LSPs at scales likely to influence boundary layer atmospheric dynamics. Here we will address directly two related questions:
- Q1. Can the LSP changes of these types, magnitudes, and extents influence the regional hydrometeorology as seen in changes to the precipitation regime?
- Q2. Have these LSP changes already influenced the regional hydrometeorology?
Hypothesis 2: The changes in regional hydrometeorology have made the Eurasian semi-arid grain belt more vulnerable to drier conditions under the influence of climate modes and this vulnerability will be enhanced given current GCM and RCM predictions under the 1990 “Business as Usual” scenarios.
- Climatic variation attributable to climate modes needs to be distinguished from directional climate change that can be attributed to anthropogenic activities.
- It is important to establish how climatic forcings affect land surface dynamics in order to assess the vulnerability of ecosystems in semi-arid environments.
- Literature shows that various teleconnections can affect meteorological variables within the study region.
- A characterization of teleconnection influences on LSP has thus far not been conducted.
- Synergistic use of ground observations of meteorological conditions and satellite observations of land surface phenology is necessary to evaluate the influence of climate modes.
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To address the question of vulnerability we must answer two sets of questions:
- Q3. To what extent are the harsher growing seasons observed within the historical weather record associated with climate modes? To what extent can these associations be observed in the satellite record? What is the effect of the teleconnections on LSP?
- Q4. What is the sensitivity of LSP in MM5-LSM in simulations forced by atmospheric conditions representing strong teleconnection influence?
