TY - JOUR
T1 - 21st-century stagnation in unvegetated sand-sea activity
AU - Gunn, Andrew
AU - East, Amy
AU - Jerolmack, Douglas J.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Claire Masteller for useful discussions, Gary Kocurek, Harrison Gray, David Thomas and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive reviews, and National Science Foundation funding (award NRI #1734355) to D.J.J. Acknowledgment is made to the Donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for partial support of this research through grant #61536-ND8 to D.J.J. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. government.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Sand seas are vast expanses of Earth’s surface containing large areas of aeolian dunes—topographic patterns manifest from above-threshold winds and a supply of loose sand. Predictions of the role of future climate change for sand-sea activity are sparse and contradictory. Here we examine the impact of climate on all of Earth’s presently-unvegetated sand seas, using ensemble runs of an Earth System Model for historical and future Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. We find that almost all of the sand seas decrease in activity relative to present-day and industrial-onset for all future SSP scenarios, largely due to more intermittent sand-transport events. An increase in event wait-times and decrease in sand transport is conducive to vegetation growth. We expect dune-forming winds will become more unimodal, and produce larger incipient wavelengths, due to weaker and more seasonal winds. Our results indicate that these qualitative changes in Earth’s deserts cannot be mitigated.
AB - Sand seas are vast expanses of Earth’s surface containing large areas of aeolian dunes—topographic patterns manifest from above-threshold winds and a supply of loose sand. Predictions of the role of future climate change for sand-sea activity are sparse and contradictory. Here we examine the impact of climate on all of Earth’s presently-unvegetated sand seas, using ensemble runs of an Earth System Model for historical and future Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. We find that almost all of the sand seas decrease in activity relative to present-day and industrial-onset for all future SSP scenarios, largely due to more intermittent sand-transport events. An increase in event wait-times and decrease in sand transport is conducive to vegetation growth. We expect dune-forming winds will become more unimodal, and produce larger incipient wavelengths, due to weaker and more seasonal winds. Our results indicate that these qualitative changes in Earth’s deserts cannot be mitigated.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132956383&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-022-31123-8
DO - 10.1038/s41467-022-31123-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 35760774
AN - SCOPUS:85132956383
VL - 13
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 3670
ER -