Considering the Role of Aerosols and Land-Atmosphere Interactions Related to Agriculture and Urbanization in Climate Studies

Dev Niyogi¹, Roger A. Pielke², Sr., Jimmy Adegoke³, Hsin-I Chang¹, Tom Chase⁴, Ellen Douglas⁵, Manish Gupte¹, Curtis Marshall⁶, Toshihisa Matsui², Patrick C. Pyle⁷, and Marshall Shepherd^8
1Purdue University
²Colorado State University
³University of Missouri at Kansas City
⁴University of Colorado
⁵University of New Hampshire
⁶NOAA
⁷North Carolina State University
⁸GSFC/NASA

We present the need to consider the spectrum of diverse climate forcings and feedbacks that impact managed and unmanaged landscapes. These include: (i) aerosol - radiative feedbacks on the carbon and water cycles, (ii) agricultural land use change effects including biophysical and biogechemical feedbacks, and (iii) the impact of landuse change associated with urbanization on precipitation. We then contrast the current paradigm of using global models to downscale to agricultural and urban areas (a top-down approach) to provide this information with a new paradigm that first assesses the vulnerability of agricultural and urban activities to the spectrum of environmental risk including climate forcings and feedback (a bottom-up approach). Examples are presented from the vulnerability perspective, along with a consideration of the impacts for urban and agriculture dominated economies of the USA and India.