Climate modification research for desert development : III. analysis of Asian deserts' simulation results

Abstract EN

Climate modification research is a new term for studying the effects of altering the Landuse in order to affect the climate positively. A previous study (2007), showed the strong effect of assuming a continuous tall palm cover (20 palms / acre, which allows for agriculture under its partial shade) in model simulations instead of the desert surface on the regional climate.

The regional climate model RegCM2 of NCAR was applied on 3 domains that include the deserts from the Atlantic Ocean to China.

Another recent study (2009), focused on the simulation results in the North African Desert.

This work presents analysis of the simulation results' effects on the regional climate and water resources in the Asian Deserts.

The model was applied to the study region in two domains.

The first domain extends from the Red Sea to Eastern China while the other extends from Tunis to Pakistan.

Although the first domain covers the area of interest, the second domain was essential for rainfall calculations in the Arabian Peninsula in order to avoid the adverse effects of near boundaries.

The year 1994 was selected to perform all model simulations mainly because it was not considered as an El-Niño or La-Niña year.

By assuming tall palm cover instead of all the Asian Deserts, the model showed an increase of annual rainfall ranging from less than 5 to 30-90 cm / yr, 10-30 to 20-90 cm / yr, 10-20 to 20-90 cm / yr and 10-20 to 40-400 cm / yr in the Arabian, Persian, Central Asian and Chinese Deserts respectively.

It also resulted in significant changes in the calculated climatic variables such as the surface air temperature, ground temperature, the geopotential heights (which indicate the atmospheric pressure), the wind streamlines, and the net solar radiation flux at the top of the atmosphere.

Assuming the suggested palm cover over selected parts of the desert (with better climatic response to Landuse changes) caused partial benefits in climatic changes and in advancing the rainfall belts on the desert surface, while reducing its harsh drought.

This shows the possibility to design a step by-step self promoting process.

In this process, changing the land surface would attract rainfall to support our activity and enable us to go with the next step in further land surface modification until the entire desert is eliminated.