Impact of land-use changes on water cycle properties in various scales using fully coupled CCSM2.0.1

Due to increasing population and industrialization, water availability becomes an essential issue for human beings. Thus, detailed research on the changes of water cycle properties under both natural and anthropogenic forcing is required. However, the responses of global and regional water cycles to large-scale land-use changes, such as deforestation and forestation, as well as feedback mechanisms still remain a lot of uncertainties. In this study, a control simulation with current CO2 and a land-use changes simulation are carried out using Climate Community System Model, version 2.0.1. The major water cycle properties including precipitation, evapotranspiration, residence time, were analyzed globally, for Northern Hemisphere, north of 60oN as well as for four test regions. Some other regional water cycle properties such as soil moisture, snow melt, run off and precipitation efficiency are also examined. Annual and seasonal averaged values, standard deviations and maximum and minimum are calculated for each scenario and student t-tests with 90% confidence level are performed to mark the significance of the changes.