资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Rising atmospheric CO₂ impacts on vegetation physiological processes can alter land feedbacks on precipitation and water resources, but understanding of regional differences in these changes is uncertain. We investigate the impact of rising CO₂ on land water resources for different wetness levels using four Earth system models. We find an overall tendency of runoff to increase across all wetness levels. However, runoff increases in wet regions are much larger than those in dry regions, especially in wet seasons. This substantial amplification of contrasts between wet and dry regions increases at 3% per 100 ppm increase in CO₂ relative to the historical period, reaching 18% for a quadrupling of CO₂, quantified by a new wetting contrast index. Physiological effects suppress evapotranspiration more in wet than dry regions, which has a larger contribution than radiative forcing to the amplification of runoff contrast, reshaping the spatial distribution of future land water resources.