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  • Review Article
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Multifaceted characteristics of dryland aridity changes in a warming world

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 2, pages 232–250 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Drylands are an essential component of the Earth System and are among the most vulnerable to climate change. In this Review, we synthesize observational and modelling evidence to demonstrate emerging differences in dryland aridity dependent on the specific metric considered. Although warming heightens vapour pressure deficit and, thus, atmospheric demand for water in both the observations and the projections, these changes do not wholly propagate to exacerbate soil moisture and runoff deficits. Moreover, counter-intuitively, many arid ecosystems have exhibited significant greening and enhanced vegetation productivity since the 1980s. Such divergence between atmospheric and ecohydrological aridity changes can primarily be related to moisture limitations by dry soils and plant physiological regulations of evapotranspiration under elevated CO2. The latter process ameliorates water stress on plant growth and decelerates warming-enhanced water losses from soils, while simultaneously warming and drying the near-surface air. We place these climate-induced aridity changes in the context of exacerbated water scarcity driven by rapidly increasing anthropogenic needs for freshwater to support population growth and economic development. Under future warming, dryland ecosystems might respond non-linearly, caused by, for example, complex ecosystem–hydrology–human interactions and increased mortality risks from drought and heat stress, which is a foremost priority for future research.

Key points

  • Atmospheric, agricultural, hydrological and ecological indices of aridity reveal strongly divergent trends since 1950 and into the near future.

  • Warming-driven increases in vapour pressure deficit hasten evaporative water loss and deplete surface moisture, in turn amplifying atmospheric drying through land–atmosphere feedbacks.

  • Plant stomatal closure under elevated CO2 reduces transpiration and compensates for the adverse effect of higher vapour pressure deficit for plant growth, explaining the co-occurrence of ecosystem greening and atmospheric drying in drylands.

  • The physiologically induced lowering of evapotranspiration under rising CO2, along with the strong limitation by soil moisture, disconnects atmospheric drying and hydrological responses in drylands.

  • With rapid climate change and population growth, anthropogenic water demand in drylands is projected to increase by ~270% by the 2090s, exacerbating current water resource scarcity.

  • As future water deficits are driven mainly by increasing water demand, sustainable water resource management and water conservation technologies are needed to balance the socio-economic demands for water resources while maintaining healthy dryland ecosystems.

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Fig. 1: Global drylands and ecohydrological conditions.
Fig. 2: Past and future dryland changes evaluated by five different aridity metrics.
Fig. 3: Continental assessment of future dryland changes.
Fig. 4: Physical and physiological mechanisms for dryland aridity changes.
Fig. 5: Dryland anthropogenic water stress under climatic and socio-economic changes.
Fig. 6: Conceptual diagram of future dryland aridity changes.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41991230, 41988101), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) program (grant no. 2019QZKK0405) and the Xplorer Prize.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Xu Lian, Shilong Piao & Xuhui Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shilong Piao & Tao Wang

  3. Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shilong Piao

  4. Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anping Chen

  5. Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anping Chen

  6. Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA

    Anping Chen

  7. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, UK

    Chris Huntingford

  8. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Bojie Fu

  9. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Bojie Fu

  10. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France

    Laurent Z. X. Li

  11. Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education, College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Jianping Huang

  12. Department of Geography, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Justin Sheffield

  13. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Alexis M. Berg

  14. Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Trevor F. Keenan

  15. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Trevor F. Keenan

  16. CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Tim R. McVicar

  17. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Tim R. McVicar & Michael L. Roderick

  18. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Yoshihide Wada

  19. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yuting Yang

  20. Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Michael L. Roderick

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  1. Xu Lian
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  2. Shilong Piao
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Contributions

S.P. formulated the Review and identified the themes to be covered. X.L. performed the analyses and drafted the figures. X.L., S.P. and A.C. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. C.H., B.F., L.Z.X.L., J.H., J.S., A.M.B., T.F.K., T.R.M., Y.W., X.W., T.W., Y.Y. and M.L.R. reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission. All authors made substantial contributions to the discussion of content.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shilong Piao.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Aristeidis Koutroulis, Sujong Jeong and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Lian, X., Piao, S., Chen, A. et al. Multifaceted characteristics of dryland aridity changes in a warming world. Nat Rev Earth Environ 2, 232–250 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-00144-0

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