REGIONAL CLIMATE FEEDBACKS FROM LAND USE CHANGES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: A SENSITIVITY STUDY USING RegCM3

Many observational and modeling studies have demonstrated the strong links between land use change and climate, and anthropogenic alterations of the land surface are now recognized to have consequences at the local, regional, and global scales. However, the effects of such changes on the local and regional climate system are not well understood, and yet, are critical to understanding future regional climate change. In Southeast Asia, a region which has experienced rapid and dramatic anthropogenic land use change in the 20th Century, shifts in precipitation patterns in response to these changes have been documented from observational data. While most climate modeling studies of the Southeast Asian region have employed low-resolution general circulation models, previous regional modeling studies for Southeast Asia have focused on land use change feedbacks on timescales from days to months and only for portions of the region. This study employs a high-resolution regional climate model centered on the Southeast Asian region, including Indochina, the Malay Peninsula, the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, and parts of Papua New Guinea and northern Australia, to conduct two simulations over the 30-year period between 1979 and 2008. Specifically, the simulations are used to compare climates with natural potential vegetation to those with modern land use as land cover, including differences in seasonal and annual temperature and precipitation distributions.