skip to main content


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Huang, Huilin"

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Abstract. Fire causes abrupt changes in vegetation properties and modifies fluxexchanges between land and atmosphere at subseasonal to seasonal scales. Yetthese short-term fire effects on vegetation dynamics and surface energybalance have not been comprehensively investigated in the fire-coupledvegetation model. This study applies the SSiB4/TRIFFID-Fire (the SimplifiedSimple Biosphere Model coupled with the Top-down Representation of InteractiveFoliage and Flora Including Dynamics with fire) model to studythe short-term fire impact in southern Africa. Specifically, we aim toquantify how large impacts fire exerts on surface energy throughdisturbances on vegetation dynamics, how fire effects evolve during the fireseason and the subsequent rainy season, and how surface-darkening effectsplay a role besides the vegetation change effects. We find fire causes an annual average reduction in grass cover by 4 %–8 %for widespread areas between 5–20∘ S and a tree cover reductionby 1 % at the southern periphery of tropical rainforests. The regionalfire effects accumulate during June–October and peak in November, thebeginning of the rainy season. After the fire season ends, the grass coverquickly returns to unburned conditions, while the tree fraction hardlyrecovers in one rainy season. The vegetation removal by fire has reduced theleaf area index (LAI) and gross primary productivity (GPP) by 3 %–5 % and5 %–7 % annually. The exposure of bare soil enhances surface albedo andtherefore decreases the absorption of shortwave radiation. Annual meansensible heat has dropped by 1.4 W m−2, while the latent heat reductionis small (0.1 W m−2) due to the compensating effects between canopytranspiration and soil evaporation. Surface temperature is increased by asmuch as 0.33 K due to the decrease of sensible heat fluxes, and the warmingwould be enhanced when the surface-darkening effect is incorporated. Ourresults suggest that fire effects in grass-dominant areas diminish within1 year due to the high resilience of grasses after fire. Yet fire effectsin the periphery of tropical forests are irreversible within one growingseason and can cause large-scale deforestation if accumulated for hundredsof years. 
    more » « less
  2. null (Ed.)
    Abstract Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) is one of the most important forcings affecting climate in the past century. This study evaluates the global and regional LULCC impacts in 1950–2015 by employing an annually updated LULCC map in a coupled land–atmosphere–ocean model. The difference between LULCC and control experiments shows an overall land surface temperature (LST) increase by 0.48 K in the LULCC regions and a widespread LST decrease by 0.18 K outside the LULCC regions. A decomposed temperature metric (DTM) is applied to quantify the relative contribution of surface processes to temperature changes. Furthermore, while precipitation in the LULCC areas is reduced in agreement with declined evaporation, LULCC causes a southward displacement of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) with a narrowing by 0.5°, leading to a tripole anomalous precipitation pattern over the warm pool. The DTM shows that the temperature response in LULCC regions results from the competing effect between increased albedo (cooling) and reduced evaporation (warming). The reduced evaporation indicates less atmospheric latent heat release in convective processes and thus a drier and cooler troposphere, resulting in a reduction in surface cooling outside the LULCC regions. The southward shift of the ITCZ implies a northward cross-equatorial energy transport anomaly in response to reduced latent/sensible heat of the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere, where LULCC is more intensive. Tropospheric cooling results in the equatorward shift of the upper-tropospheric westerly jet in both hemispheres, which, in turn, leads to an equatorward narrowing of the Hadley circulation and ITCZ. 
    more » « less
  3. null (Ed.)
    Abstract. Fire is one of the primary disturbances to the distribution and ecologicalproperties of the world's major biomes and can influence the surface fluxesand climate through vegetation–climate interactions. This study incorporatesa fire model of intermediate complexity to a biophysical model with dynamicvegetation, SSiB4/TRIFFID (The Simplified Simple Biosphere Model coupledwith the Top-down Representation of Interactive Foliage and Flora IncludingDynamics Model). This new model, SSiB4/TRIFFID-Fire, updating fire impact onthe terrestrial carbon cycle every 10 d, is then used to simulate theburned area during 1948–2014. The simulated global burned area in 2000–2014is 471.9 Mha yr−1, close to the estimate of 478.1 Mha yr−1 inGlobal Fire Emission Database v4s (GFED4s), with a spatial correlation of0.8. The SSiB4/TRIFFID-Fire reproduces temporal variations of the burnedarea at monthly to interannual scales. Specifically, it captures theobserved decline trend in northern African savanna fire and accuratelysimulates the fire seasonality in most major fire regions. The simulatedfire carbon emission is 2.19 Pg yr−1, slightly higher than the GFED4s(2.07 Pg yr−1). The SSiB4/TRIFFID-Fire is applied to assess the long-term fire impact onecosystem characteristics and surface energy budget by comparing model runswith and without fire (FIRE-ON minus FIRE-OFF). The FIRE-ON simulationreduces tree cover over 4.5 % of the global land surface, accompanied bya decrease in leaf area index and vegetation height by 0.10 m2 m−2and 1.24 m, respectively. The surface albedo and sensible heat are reducedthroughout the year, while latent heat flux decreases in the fire season butincreases in the rainy season. Fire results in an increase in surfacetemperature over most fire regions. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract. Subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) prediction, especially the prediction of extreme hydroclimate events such as droughts and floods, is not only scientifically challenging, but also has substantial societal impacts. Motivated by preliminary studies, the Global Energy and Water Exchanges(GEWEX)/Global Atmospheric System Study (GASS) has launched a new initiativecalled “Impact of Initialized Land Surface Temperature and Snowpack on Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction” (LS4P) as the first international grass-roots effort to introduce spring land surface temperature(LST)/subsurface temperature (SUBT) anomalies over high mountain areas as acrucial factor that can lead to significant improvement in precipitationprediction through the remote effects of land–atmosphere interactions. LS4P focuses on process understanding and predictability, and hence it is differentfrom, and complements, other international projects that focus on theoperational S2S prediction. More than 40 groups worldwide have participated in this effort, including 21 Earth system models, 9 regionalclimate models, and 7 data groups. This paper provides an overview of the history and objectives of LS4P, provides the first-phase experimental protocol (LS4P-I) which focuses on the remote effect ofthe Tibetan Plateau, discusses the LST/SUBT initialization, and presents thepreliminary results. Multi-model ensemble experiments and analyses ofobservational data have revealed that the hydroclimatic effect of the springLST on the Tibetan Plateau is not limited to the Yangtze River basin but may have a significant large-scale impact on summer precipitation beyond EastAsia and its S2S prediction. Preliminary studies and analysis have alsoshown that LS4P models are unable to preserve the initialized LST anomaliesin producing the observed anomalies largely for two main reasons: (i) inadequacies in the land models arising from total soil depths which are tooshallow and the use of simplified parameterizations, which both tend to limit the soil memory; (ii) reanalysis data, which are used for initial conditions, have large discrepancies from the observed mean state andanomalies of LST over the Tibetan Plateau. Innovative approaches have beendeveloped to largely overcome these problems. 
    more » « less