Obbe Tuinenburg

Obbe Tuinenburg
Utrecht University | UU · Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development

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50
Publications
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2,142
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Publications

Publications (50)
Article
Full-text available
Many areas across the globe rely for their precipitation supply on terrestrial precipitation recycling, which is the amount of precipitation that has evaporated from upwind land areas. Global warming and land-use changes may affect the future patterns of terrestrial precipitation recycling, but where and to which extent remains unclear. To study ho...
Preprint
Full-text available
Many areas across the globe rely on upwind land areas for their precipitation supply through terrestrial precipitation recycling. Global warming and land-use changes may affect the future patterns of terrestrial precipitation recycling, but where and to which extent remains unclear. To study how the global patterns of precipitation recycling may ch...
Article
Full-text available
Changes in evaporation over land affect terrestrial precipitation via atmospheric moisture recycling and, consequently, freshwater availability. Although global moisture recycling at regional and continental scales is relatively well understood, the patterns of local moisture recycling and the main variables that impact it remain unknown. We calcul...
Article
Full-text available
Earth’s hydrological cycle critically depends on the atmospheric moisture flows connecting evaporation to precipitation. Here we convert a decade of reanalysis-based moisture simulations into a high-resolution global directed network of spatial moisture provisions. We reveal global and local network structures that offer a new view of the global hy...
Preprint
Full-text available
Changes in evaporation over land affect terrestrial precipitation via atmospheric moisture recycling and consequently freshwater availability. Although global moisture recycling at regional and continental scales are relatively well understood, the patterns and drivers of local moisture recycling remain unknown. For the first time, we calculate the...
Article
Full-text available
Tipping elements are nonlinear subsystems of the Earth system that have the potential to abruptly shift to another state if environmental change occurs close to a critical threshold with large consequences for human societies and ecosystems. Among these tipping elements may be the Amazon rainforest, which has been undergoing intensive anthropogenic...
Preprint
Full-text available
Earth's hydrological cycle critically depends on the atmospheric moisture flows connecting evaporation to precipitation. Here, we convert a decade of reanalysis-based moisture simulations into a high-resolution global directed network of spatial moisture provisions. We reveal global and local network structures that offer a new view of the global h...
Article
Full-text available
Forest restoration is increasingly applied as a climate change mitigation measure. Apart from sequestering carbon, the large-scale addition of trees on Earth may enhance global precipitation levels. Here we estimate the global precipitation effects of the global forest potential by estimating its effects on evaporation and simulating the downwind p...
Article
Full-text available
Precipitation recycling is essential to sustaining regional ecosystems and water supplies, and it is impacted by land development and climate change. This is especially true in the tropics, where dense vegetation greatly influences recycling. Unfortunately, large-scale models of recycling often exhibit high uncertainty, complicating efforts to esti...
Article
Full-text available
The Amazon forest enhances precipitation levels regionally as trees take up water from the soil and release it back into the atmosphere through transpiration. Therefore, land-use changes in the Amazon affect precipitation patterns but to what extent remains unclear. Recent studies used hydrological and atmospheric models to estimate the contributio...
Article
Full-text available
The Amazon moisture recycling system has been widely examined because it is fundamental to maintain some of the global climate processes, however, we have yet to know to what extent the agricultural growing season is dependent on the evapotranspiration contribution from the Amazon forest. Here we use a moisture tracking model to calculate the fores...
Article
Full-text available
Atmospheric moisture recycling effectively increases the amount of usable water over land as the water can undergo multiple precipitation–evapotranspiration cycles. Differences in land cover and climate regulate the evapotranspiration flux. Forests can have deep roots that access groundwater facilitating transpiration throughout the dry season inde...
Article
Full-text available
A key Earth system process is the circulation of evaporated moisture through the atmosphere. Spatial connections between evaporation and precipitation affect the global and regional climates by redistributing water and latent heat. Through this atmospheric moisture recycling, land cover changes influence regional precipitation patterns, with potent...
Article
Full-text available
Tropical forests modify the conditions they depend on through feedbacks at different spatial scales. These feedbacks shape the hysteresis (history-dependence) of tropical forests, thus controlling their resilience to deforestation and response to climate change. Here, we determine the emergent hysteresis from local-scale tipping points and regional...
Article
Full-text available
Glaciers in High Mountain Asia (HMA) provide an important water resource for communities downstream, and they are markedly impacted by global warming, yet there is a lack of understanding of the observed glacier mass balances and their spatial variability. In particular, the glaciers in the western Kunlun Shan and Karakoram (WKSK) ranges show neutr...
Preprint
Full-text available
Tipping elements are nonlinear subsystems of the Earth system that can potentially abruptly and irreversibly shift if environmental change occurs. Among these tipping elements is the Amazon rainforest, which is threatened by anthropogenic activities and increasingly frequent droughts. Here, we assess how extreme deviations from climatological rainf...
Preprint
Full-text available
A key Earth system process is the circulation of evaporated moisture through the atmosphere. Spatial connections between evaporation and precipitation affect the global and regional climates by redistributing water and latent heat. Through this atmospheric moisture recycling, land-cover changes influence regional precipitation patterns, with potent...
Article
Full-text available
Many processes in hydrology and Earth system science relate to continental moisture recycling, the contribution of terrestrial evaporation to precipitation. For example, the effects of land-cover changes on regional rainfall regimes depend on this process. To study moisture recycling, a range of moisture-tracking models are in use that are forced w...
Article
Tipping points occur in diverse systems in various disciplines such as ecology, climate science, economy, and engineering. Tipping points are critical thresholds in system parameters or state variables at which a tiny perturbation can lead to a qualitative change of the system. Many systems with tipping points can be modeled as networks of coupled...
Article
Full-text available
Deforestation and drought are among the greatest environmental pressures on the Amazon rainforest, possibly destabilizing the forest-climate system. Deforestation in the Amazon reduces rainfall regionally, while this deforestation itself has been reported to be facilitated by droughts. Here we quantify the interactions between drought and deforesta...
Article
Full-text available
In this study, we investigate how specific micro-interaction structures (motifs) affect the occurrence of tipping cascades on networks of stylized tipping elements. We compare the properties of cascades in Erdős–Rényi networks and an exemplary moisture recycling network of the Amazon rainforest. Within these networks, decisive small-scale motifs ar...
Preprint
Full-text available
Deforestation and drought are among the greatest environmental pressures on the Amazon rainforest, possibly destabilizing the forest-climate system. Deforestation in the Amazon reduces rainfall regionally, while this deforestation itself has been reported to be facilitated by droughts. Here we quantify the interactions between drought and deforesta...
Preprint
Full-text available
In this study, we investigate how specific micro interaction structures (motifs) affect the occurrence of tipping cascades on networks of stylized tipping elements. We compare the properties of cascades in Erd\"os-R\'enyi networks and an exemplary moisture recycling network of the Amazon rainforest. Within these networks, decisive small-scale motif...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract. Many processes in hydrology and Earth system science relate to moisture recycling, the contribution of terrestrial evaporation to precipitation. For example, the effects of land-cover changes on regional rainfall regimes depend on this process. To study moisture recycling, a range of moisture tracking models are in use that are forced wit...
Preprint
Full-text available
Glaciers in High Mountain Asia provide an important water resource for communities downstream and they are markedly impacted by global warming, yet there is a lack in understanding of the observed glacier mass balances and their spatial variability. In particular, the glaciers in the western Kunlun Shan and Karakoram ranges (WKSK) show neutral to p...
Article
We welcome the attention given to forest and trees by the Report “The global tree restoration potential” (5 July, p. 76), in which J.-F. Bastin et al. study the potential of tree cover to reduce climate change. However, we are concerned by their neglect of the water cycle.
Preprint
Full-text available
Tipping points occur in a lot of systems in various disciplines such as ecology, climate science, economy or engineering. Tipping points are critical thresholds in system parameters or state variables at which a tiny perturbation can lead to a qualitative change of the system. Many systems with tipping points can be modeled as networks of coupled m...
Article
Full-text available
Recent studies determined the residence time of moisture in the atmosphere to be 8–10 days but with large spatial and temporal differences. An unexplained daily cycle in the probability density function (PDF) of the residence time of land evaporation was observed, which was not present for oceanic evaporation. Moreover, the PDF of atmospheric resid...
Article
Full-text available
Tree transpiration in the Amazon may enhance rainfall for downwind forests. Until now it has been unclear how this cascading effect plays out across the basin. Here, we calculate local forest transpiration and the subsequent trajectories of transpired water through the atmosphere in high spatial and temporal detail. We estimate that one-third of Am...
Article
Full-text available
Many glaciers in the north-west of High Mountain Asia (HMA) show an almost zero or positive mass balance, despite the global trend of melting glaciers. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “Karakoram anomaly”, although strongest positive mass balances can be found in the Kunlun Shan mountain range, north-east of the Karakoram. Using a region...
Article
Full-text available
Irrigation modulates the water cycle by making water available for plants, increasing transpiration and atmospheric humidity, while decreasing temperatures due to the energy that is needed for evaporation. Irrigation is usually not included in atmospheric reanalysis systems, but moisture can be added to the soil due to data-assimilation. This paper...
Article
Full-text available
This paper revisits the knowledge on the residence time of water in the atmosphere. Based on state-of-the-art data of the hydrological cycle we derive a global average residence time of 8.9 ± 0.4 days (uncertainty given as 1 standard deviation). We use two different atmospheric moisture tracking models (WAM-2layers and 3D-T) to obtain atmospheric r...
Article
Full-text available
This paper revisits the knowledge on the residence time of water in the atmosphere. Based on state-of-the-art data of the hydrological cycle we derive a global average residence time of 8.9 ± 0.4 days (uncertainty given as one standard deviation). We use two different atmospheric moisture tracking models (WAM-2layers and 3D-Trajectories) to obta...
Article
Full-text available
This study aims to investigate some characteristics of the moist processes of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO), by making use of joint HDO (or δD) and H2O vapor measurements. The MJO is the main intraseasonal mode of the tropical climate, but is hard to properly simulate in global atmospheric models. The joint use of δD-H2O diagnostics yields ad...
Article
Full-text available
The effect of large-scale irrigation in India on the moisture budget of the atmosphere was investigated using three regional climate models and one global climate model, all of which performed an irrigated run and a natural run without irrigation. Using a common irrigation map, year-round irrigation was represented by adding water to the soil moist...
Article
Full-text available
This paper compares state-of-the-art atmospheric moisture tracking models. Such models are typically used to study the water component of coupled land and atmosphere models, in particular quantifying moisture recycling and the source-sink relations between evaporation and precipitation. There are several atmospheric moisture tracking methods in use...
Article
The northern Indian subcontinent has frequently been identified as a hotspot for land atmosphere interactions. It is also a region with the highest concentration of irrigated land and highest (and increasing) population density in the world. The available water in the region with which to grow food depends on the Asian monsoon, groundwater and melt...
Article
Full-text available
This paper compares three state-of-the-art atmospheric water tracing models. Such models are typically used to study the water component of the coupling between the land surface and the atmosphere: moisture recycling and the source-sink relations of evaporation and precipitation. However, the applicability of the many atmospheric water tracing meth...
Article
Full-text available
This research studies river basin moisture recycling rates in order to determine the atmospheric part of the water cycle and the influence of the land surface there on. For river basins in India (Ganges and Indus), the fraction of evaporation that falls again as precipitation in the same river basin (the moisture recycling) is determined. Furthermo...
Article
Full-text available
Following the convective triggering potential (CTP)–humidity index (HIlow) framework by Findell and Eltahir, the sensitivity of atmospheric convection to soil moisture conditions is studied for India. Using the same slab model as Findell and Eltahir, atmospheric conditions in which the land surface state affects convective precipitation are determi...
Conference Paper
The GEWEX Land-Atmosphere System Study / Local Coupling (GLASS/LoCo) project seeks to understand the role of local land-atmosphere coupling in the evolution of surface fluxes, and land and atmospheric state variables including clouds. The theme of land-atmosphere interaction is a research area that is rapidly developing; new research has evolved in...
Conference Paper
The Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Land-Atmosphere System Study / Local Coupling (GLASS/LoCo) project seeks to understand the role of local land-atmosphere coupling in the evolution of surface fluxes and boundary layer state variables including clouds. The theme of land-atmosphere interaction is a research area that is rapidly dev...
Article
Water managers in the Rhine basin are increasingly confronted with a continuous stream of credible scientific information on both the potential magnitude of climate change and climate variability and the vulnerability of water resources to climate change impacts. Current large-scale adaptations in the Rhine basin are developed at the country level...

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