Oceanic sources of continental precipitation and the correlation with sea surface temperature

Ent, Ruud J. van der; Savenije, H. H. G.

doi:10.1002/wrcr.20296

Cited by 99 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 89 publications

(114 reference statements)

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“…While it is the small fraction of evaporation and precipitation that occurs over land that directly impacts human populations and industries, observational estimates indicate that 85% of the global evaporation and 77% of precipitation occur over the ocean (Durack 2015;Schanze et al 2010;Trenberth et al 2007). This net evaporation over the oceans is crucial for driving the relatively small amount of precipitation over land (Gimeno et al 2010(Gimeno et al , 2011van der Ent and Savenije 2013), and as such a full understanding of the water cycle requires a global perspective. Patterns of evaporation minus precipitation (E 2 P) also have cascading impacts on oceanic circulations via buoyancy and mass forcing, and on atmospheric circulation through latent heat release and cloud feedbacks .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Centennial Changes of the Global Water Cycle in CMIP5 Models

Levang

Schmitt

2015

Journal of Climate

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The global water cycle is predicted to intensify under various greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Here the nature and strength of the expected changes for the ocean in the coming century are assessed by examining the output of several CMIP5 model runs for the periods 1990-2000 and 2090-2100 and comparing them to a dataset built from modern observations. Key elements of the water cycle, such as the atmospheric vapor transport, the evaporation minus precipitation over the ocean, and the surface salinity, show significant changes over the coming century. The intensification of the water cycle leads to increased salinity contrasts in the ocean, both within and between basins. Regional projections for several areas important to large-scale ocean circulation are presented, including the export of atmospheric moisture across the tropical Americas from Atlantic to Pacific Ocean, the freshwater gain of high-latitude deep water formation sites, and the basin averaged evaporation minus precipitation with implications for interbasin mass transports.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Centennial Changes of the Global Water Cycle in CMIP5 Models

Levang

Schmitt

2015

Journal of Climate

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“…Globally, approximately 10% of oceanic evaporation is transported to land and contributes about 40% of terrestrial precipitation (Oki and Kanae, 2006;Trenberth et al, 2007;Gimeno et al, 2010). However, the contribution of oceanic evaporation to precipitation over land varies considerably across the globe (Keys et al, 2012;Xu et al, 2013;van der Ent and Savenije, 2013). For example, the North Atlantic Subtropical Ocean exhibits an extensive influence: its evaporation contributes to precipitation over large parts of Eurasia, Mexico, and even South America.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A recent study illustrated that the North Atlantic Oscillation even affects weather in northeast China due to its triggering effect on the high-level tropospheric Rossby wave in the Eurasian continent (Zhou et al, 2013). Moreover, exploring the source of atmospheric moisture facilitates understanding of the vulnerability of rainfall-dependent regions to atmospheric perturbations, and can help to improve water resources management policies (Keys et al, 2012;van der Ent and Savenije, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source of atmospheric moisture and precipitation over China’s major river basins

Zhao

et al. 2015

Front. Earth Sci.

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Oceanic evaporation via the East Asian Monsoon (EAM) has been regarded as the major source of precipitation over China, but a recent study estimated that terrestrial evaporation might contribute up to 80% of the precipitation in the country. To explain the contradiction, this study presents a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of oceanic and terrestrial evaporation to atmospheric moisture and precipitation in China's major river basins. The results show that from 1980 to 2010, the mean annual atmospheric moisture (precipitable water) over China was 13.7 mm, 39% of which originates from oceanic evaporation and 61% from terrestrial evaporation. The mean annual precipitation was 737 mm, 43% of which originates from oceanic evaporation and 57% from terrestrial evaporation. Oceanic evaporation makes a greater contribution to atmospheric moisture and precipitation in the East Asian Monsoon Region in South and East China than terrestrial evaporation does. Particularly, for the Pearl River and southeastern rivers, oceanic evaporation contributes approximately 65% of annual precipitation and more than 70% of summer precipitation. Meanwhile, terrestrial evaporation contributes more precipitation in northwest China due to the westerly wind. For the northwestern rivers, terrestrial evaporation from the Eurasian continents contributes more than 70% of precipitation. There is a linear relation between mean annual precipitation and the contribution of oceanic evaporation to precipitation, with a correlation coefficient of 0.92, among the ten major river basins in China.

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“…We estimate that the choice of the three‐dimensional atmospheric forcing data set has a smaller impact on the results of our study than that of the surface fluxes. Climatological moisture footprints, so‐called evaporation sheds (Van der Ent & Savenije, ), are similar for the moisture tracking model forced with MERRA reanalysis (Rienecker et al, ) and ERA‐I (Keys et al, ). So we assume these footprints to be not very sensitive to the atmospheric forcing data set used, although we did not repeat the procedure with an alternative forcing data set.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land Surface Processes Create Patterns in Atmospheric Residence Time of Water

Tuinenburg

Ent

2019

JGR Atmospheres

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Recent studies determined the residence time of moisture in the atmosphere to be 8–10 days but with large spatial and temporal differences. An unexplained daily cycle in the probability density function (PDF) of the residence time of land evaporation was observed, which was not present for oceanic evaporation. Moreover, the PDF of atmospheric residence time of oceanic evaporation was found to be a monotonically decreasing, while for land evaporation, this function had increasing probabilities during the first few days and monotonically decreasing probabilities thereafter. This research determines the causes of (I) the daily cycle in this PDF and (II) the shape of the atmospheric residence time PDF. The strong daily cycle in the residence time PDF using ERA‐Interim is attributed to the fact that the evaporation and precipitation have the same diurnal cycle in ERA‐Interim. Therefore, evaporation entering the atmosphere has the highest probability of returning to the land surface as precipitation at the same moment during the day but possibly a number of days later. Interestingly, this diurnal cycle was almost absent in the simulations forced with GLDAS surface fluxes. Therefore, we conclude that the previously found daily cycle in the atmospheric residence time PDF is due to differences in the diurnal cycles of precipitation in the underlying data sets. Transpiration causes the increasing probabilities during the first days, while bare soil evaporation and canopy interception typically have a monotonically decreasing PDF. Therefore, we conclude that transpiration causes the largest differences in atmospheric residence time between ocean and land evaporation.

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Oceanic sources of continental precipitation and the correlation with sea surface temperature

Cited by 99 publications

References 89 publications

Centennial Changes of the Global Water Cycle in CMIP5 Models

Centennial Changes of the Global Water Cycle in CMIP5 Models

Source of atmospheric moisture and precipitation over China’s major river basins

Land Surface Processes Create Patterns in Atmospheric Residence Time of Water

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