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Publication Abstracts

Mankin et al. 2019

Mankin, J.S., R. Seager, J.E. Smerdon, B.I. Cook, and A.P. Williams, 2019: Mid-latitude freshwater availability reduced by projected vegetation responses to climate change. Nat. Geosci., 12, no. 12, 983-988, doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0480-x.

Plants are expected to generate more global-scale runoff under increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations through their influence on surface resistance to evapotranspiration. Recent studies using Earth System Models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project ostensibly reaffirm this result, further suggesting that plants will ameliorate the dire reductions in water availability projected by other studies that use aridity metrics. Here we complicate this narrative by analysing the change in precipitation partitioning to plants, runoff and storage in multiple Earth system models under both high carbon dioxide concentrations and warming. We show that projected plant responses directly reduce future runoff across vast swaths of North America, Europe and Asia because bulk canopy water demands increase with additional vegetation growth and longer and warmer growing seasons. These runoff declines occur despite increased surface resistance to evapotranspiration and vegetation total water use efficiency, even in regions with increasing or unchanging precipitation. We demonstrate that constraining the large uncertainty in the multimodel ensemble with regional-scale observations of evapotranspiration partitioning strengthens these results. We conclude that terrestrial vegetation plays a large and unresolved role in shaping future regional freshwater availability, one that will not ubiquitously ameliorate future warming-driven surface drying.

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BibTeX Citation

@article{ma07410r,
  author={Mankin, J. S. and Seager, R. and Smerdon, J. E. and Cook, B. I. and Williams, A. P.},
  title={Mid-latitude freshwater availability reduced by projected vegetation responses to climate change},
  year={2019},
  journal={Nature Geoscience},
  volume={12},
  number={12},
  pages={983--988},
  doi={10.1038/s41561-019-0480-x},
}

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RIS Citation

TY  - JOUR
ID  - ma07410r
AU  - Mankin, J. S.
AU  - Seager, R.
AU  - Smerdon, J. E.
AU  - Cook, B. I.
AU  - Williams, A. P.
PY  - 2019
TI  - Mid-latitude freshwater availability reduced by projected vegetation responses to climate change
JA  - Nat. Geosci.
JO  - Nature Geoscience
VL  - 12
IS  - 12
SP  - 983
EP  - 988
DO  - 10.1038/s41561-019-0480-x
ER  -

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