Abstract
A reliable projection of future risk of decadal megadrought is crucial to adaption and mitigation over eastern China in future climate changes. However, it’s difficult to forecast the time of megadrought, which is dominated by internal variability of the model. Using a 50-member ensemble of simulations from the Community Earth System Model Version 2 Large Ensemble (CESM2-LE), it is found that, under the medium-high emission scenario (i.e., SSP3-7.0), internal variability account for all the uncertainty of decadal precipitation variability over eastern China, and the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO) could contribute about 30% to the internal uncertainty during future period (2021–2080). Finally, an emergent constraint based on IPO phase is applied to reduce the uncertainty of simulated precipitation and to forecast the future megadrought risk. The constrained precipitation changes show that northern China will experience a high megadrought risk in the 2050s–2060s, and Yangtze River Valley will experience a high megadrought risk in the 2030s–2040s. These will have great benefit to specific strategies of social infrastructure in the future.
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Data availability
Datasets from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 simulations were archived at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/. The Community Earth System Model Version 2 Large Ensemble were download from https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/projects/community-projects/LENS2/data-sets.html. The observed datasets can be accessed with the following links: GPCC (https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/GPCC/html/download_gate.html), ERSST (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/extended-reconstructed-sst).
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Acknowledgments
This research was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFA0608601), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB40000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41971021, 41971108, 42130604, 42111530182, 41631175, and 42075049), and Open Funds of State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS (SKLLQG1820, SKLLQG1930). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.
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Yanmin Qin and Liang Ning designed the research. Yanmin Qin performed the analysis, drew all the figures, and wrote the first draft of the paper. Liang Ning modified the draft. Longhui Li and Zhengyu Liu provided comments on the analysis. All authors discussed and commented on the paper.
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Qin, Y., Ning, L., Li, L. et al. Future risk of decadal megadrought events over eastern China based on IPO-constrained precipitation. Clim Dyn 62, 2227–2238 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-07018-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-07018-9