Land Processes as the Forcing of Extremes

Climate extreme events are critical in the study of climate change due to their heightened societal and environmental impacts, such as water resource shortage, flooding, and agricultural loss. Under the global warming, extreme events could be more frequent and more intense. Since the supply of moisture over land is limited with large spatial inhomogeneity and highly influenced by climate variations, land-atmosphere interactions are regarded as a major source of uncertainty in climate models. Both positive and negative land-atmosphere feedbacks can coexist at different temporal and spatial scales. To what extent land-atmosphere interactions play a role in changing the pattern of climate extremes is of great importance. In this chapter, we review existing studies on the impact of land-atmosphere interactions on climate extremes, with a focus on soil moisture–rainfall feedbacks.