Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The impacts of LUCC on the regional temperature and precipitation are the
synthetic effects of the processes mentioned above. There has been great progress
in the research on the single process and their synthetic effects. Besides, the
impacts of the land cover change happen at certain temporal and spatial scales. For
example, the mesoscale land cover change influences the regional temperature
through the land surface albedo in short and medium terms, while the geochemical
process influences the change in temperature at larger temporal and spatial scales.
1.3 Simulation of the Effects of LUCC on the Regional
Climate Model
1.3.1 Development from the Global Climate Models
to the Regional Climate Models
The climate model consists of the set of equations that can be used to determine
the characteristics and evolution of the components of the climate system
according to the fundamental physical laws such as the law of conservation of
energy and law of conservation of mass. Then the climate model is constructed by
routinize the set of equations with the computer. The climate model can be used to
not only simulate the current climate, but also simulate the climate change caused
by the change in the boundary conditions (Kattenberg et al.
1996
). Therefore, the
climate model will serve as the most important test tool if the people wish to study
the climate and its change with the experimental method.
The earliest researches on the regional climate effects generally used Global
Climate Models (GCMs), and carried out the sensitivity test with the force-
response method (Pielke et al.
1998
), i.e., represent the land use changes with the
changes of the land surface parameters (e.g., albedo, roughness and evapotrans-
piration). Generally, the control experiment is first carried out with the GCMs, and
then the land surface parameters are changed to carry out the simulation and
thereafter compare with the reference test so as to analyze the response of the
climate to the land use changes (Himiyama and Bicik
2012
). Thereafter, the
method was applied to many researches on the response of climate to the change of
the land surface parameters such as the evapotranspiration, roughness, stomatal
conductance and leaf area index.
The GCMs have been widely used in the study of climate change, and a lot of
effective work has been done in the simulation of influence of the LUCC on the
global temperature and precipitation at large scale and the research on the climate
effects of trace gases in the atmosphere, etc. (Salmun and Molod
2006
). However,
