Precipitation Response to Land Cover Changes in the Netherlands

Abstract:

Precipitation has increased by 25% over the last century in the Netherlands. In this period, conversion of peat areas into grassland, expansion of urban areas, and the creation of new land in Lake Ijssel were the largest land cover changes. Both station data analysis (Daniels et al. 2014) and high-resolution (2.5 km) simulations with the atmospheric Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model suggest that the observed increase in precipitation is not due to these land cover changes. Instead, the change from historical (1900) to present (2000) land cover decreases precipitation in WRF (Figure).

However, WRF seems to be very sensitive to changes in evapotranspiration. The creation of new land and the expansion of urban areas are similar from a moisture perspective, since they locally decrease evapotranspiration, and therefore affect the soil moisture-precipitation feedback mechanism. In our simulations, the resulting feedback is always positive, as a reduction in evapotranspiration causes a reduction of precipitation.

There is a difference between urban areas and land in WRF however. Over urban areas, the planetary boundary layer (PBL) height increases more than the lifting condensation level (LCL), and the potential to trigger precipitation hereby increases. This in turn decreases the strength, but not sign, of the soil moisture-precipitation feedback. WRF is therefore unable to reproduce the observed precipitation enhancement downwind of urban areas. In all, it seems the sensitivity of WRF to changes in surface moisture might be too high and this questions the applicability of the model to investigate land cover changes.

Daniels, E. E., G. Lenderink, R. W. A. Hutjes, and A. A. M. Holtslag, 2014: Spatial precipitation patterns and trends in The Netherlands during 1951-2009. International Journal of Climatology, 34, 1773-1784.

Figure: Composite summer precipitation (mm) based on 19 single day cases (a), showing the decreases resulting from changing present to historic land cover (b) and to land cover projected in 2040 (c).