Disentangling warming- from land use-induced precipitation changes over China

China's rainfall variability has intensified with more extreme wet and dry years, resulting in disastrous floods and droughts, with annual drought-related economic losses totaling some $5 billion between 1949 and 2013. Rigorous attribution of China's precipitation "whiplash" requires us to disentangle the confounding effects of emissions-driven warming and anthropogenic land use changes, both of which have heavily influenced China's transient climate over the last half century. Here we build on the body of research attributing changes in China's drought variability by implementing a novel 31-year time series of land use and land cover (LULC) change maps derived from remotely sensed data into NCAR'S Community Earth System Model (CESM2). Using an idealized experimental design, our approach allows us to assess the combined effects of the massive spatiotemporal variability of LULC and emissions-driven warming that has occurred in China over the last several decades. At the same time, it positions us to reconcile the distinct influences of LULC changes and anthropogenic warming on precipitation and its variability to better inform decision-making on land use policy in an era of nonstationary climate extremes.