Climate Change - Realities, Impacts Over Ice Cap, Sea Level and Risks

Abstract

In researches related to the climate change, soil moisture is serving as an excellent environmental indicator controlling and regulating the interaction between the atmosphere and the land surface (Betts et al. 1996; Entekhabi et al. 1996). Soil moisture controls the ratio of runoff and infiltration (Delworth & Manabe 1988; Wagner et al. 2003), decides the energy fluxes (Entekhabi et al. 1996; Prigent et al. 2005) and influents vegetation development and then carbon cycle (Pastor & Post 1986; Melillo et al. 2002). Moreover, soil moisture is also an important factor in animal and plant productivity and it can even constrain to the interaction between natural system and anthropic activity. Therefore, the distribution pattern of soil moisture, both spatial and temporal, is the key of climate system modelling. Moreover, a long term soil moisture data set on a region scale therefore could provide valuable information for researches such as climate change and global warming (Seneviratne et al. 2006), and then improve the weather forecasting (Beljaars et al. 1996; Schar et al. 1999) and water resources management.