Oceanic climate changes threaten the sustainability of Asia’s water tower

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorZhang, Qiang
dc.contributor.authorShen, Zexi
dc.contributor.authorPokhel, Yadu
dc.contributor.authorFarinotti, Daniel
dc.contributor.authorSingh, Vijay P.
dc.contributor.authorXu, Chong-Yu
dc.contributor.authorWu, Wenhuan
dc.contributor.authorWang, Gang
dc.date.accessioned2023-04-27T03:56:54Z
dc.date.available2023-04-27T03:56:54Z
dc.date.issued2023-03-01
dc.description© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Nature, 2023, available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05643-8 . Keywords: atmospheric dynamics; climate-change impacts; hydrology; projection and prediction.
dc.description.abstractWater resources sustainability in High Mountain Asia (HMA) surrounding the Tibetan Plateau (TP)—known as Asia’s water tower—has triggered widespread concerns because HMA protects millions of people against water stress. However, the mechanisms behind the heterogeneous trends observed in terrestrial water storage (TWS) over the TP remain poorly understood. Here we use a Lagrangian particle dispersion model and satellite observations to attribute about 1 Gt of monthly TWS decline in the southern TP during 2003–2016 to westerlies-carried deficit in precipitation minus evaporation (PME) from the southeast North Atlantic. We further show that HMA blocks the propagation of PME deficit into the central TP, causing a monthly TWS increase by about 0.5 Gt. Furthermore, warming-induced snow and glacial melt as well as drying-induced TWS depletion in HMA weaken the blocking of HMA’s mountains, causing persistent northward expansion of the TP’s TWS deficit since 2009. Future projections under two emissions scenarios verified by satellite observations during 2020–2021 indicate that, by the end of the twenty-first century, up to 84% (for scenario SSP245) and 97% (for scenario SSP585) of the TP could be afflicted by TWS deficits. Our findings indicate a trajectory towards unsustainable water systems in HMA that could exacerbate downstream water stress.
dc.description.sponsorshipAcknowledgements: Q.Z., Z.S., W.W. and G.W. acknowledge the support from the China National Key R&D Program (grant no. 2019YFA0606900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42041006) and the Engineering Research Center for Water Resources & Ecological Water in Cold and Arid Regions of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China (grant no. 2020.A-003). Y.P. acknowledges the support from the National Science Foundation (grant no. 1752729). D.F. acknowledges the support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 200021_184634).
dc.identifier.citationZhang, Q., Shen, Z., Pokhrel, Y. et al. Oceanic climate changes threaten the sustainability of Asia’s water tower. Nature 615, 87–93 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05643-8
dc.identifier.otherhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05643-8
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14096/334
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.titleOceanic climate changes threaten the sustainability of Asia’s water tower
dc.typeArticle

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
s41586-022-05643-8.pdf
Size:
62.31 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download

Collections

Water