Assessment of Climate Change in Central Asia from 1980 to 2100 Using the Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification

The accelerated global warming and heterogeneous change in precipitation have been resulting in climate system shifts, which plays a key role in the stability of ecosystem and social economic development. Central Asia is account 80% of the temperate desert, characterized by fragile ecosystem; howeve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmosphere
Main Authors: Huili He, Geping Luo, Peng Cai, Rafiq Hamdi, Piet Termonia, Philippe De Maeyer, Alishir Kurban, Jianjun Li
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021
Subjects:
Central Asia
Köppen-Geiger climate classification
climatic zone shifts
Meteorology. Climatology
QC851-999
Geiger
Tundra
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12010123
https://doaj.org/article/55ca02c37ab64264848ef00cdcd747be
Description
Summary:The accelerated global warming and heterogeneous change in precipitation have been resulting in climate system shifts, which plays a key role in the stability of ecosystem and social economic development. Central Asia is account 80% of the temperate desert, characterized by fragile ecosystem; however, it has experienced the fastest warming in recent decades and projected warming in future. The Köppen-Geiger climate classification is a useful tool to assess the potential impacts of climate change on regional ecosystem. The spatial shift and temporal evolution of each climatic zone based on Köppen-Geiger climate classification are analyzed in historical and future period under different scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), high risk regions that might experience more frequent climatic zone shifts are delimited in this study, which could provide the useful information for developing mitigate strategies in coping with the warming threat. The hotter and dryer subtypes of arid climatic zone and warmer subtypes of temperate climatic zone expanded their coverage in Central Asia, corresponding to the tundra climatic, cooler subtype of arid and temperate climatic zone contracted. Based on a method defining the climate-sensitivity, high risk regions are mainly distributed in northern Kazakhstan and Tianshan Mountains region.

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