Scaling Potential Evapotranspiration with Greenhouse Warming

Scheff, Jacob; Frierson, Dargan M. W.

doi:10.1175/jcli-d-13-00233.1

Cited by 247 publications

(228 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The main reason for the projected increase in global ET o is increased temperature, which increases the vapour pressure deficit and increases the Clausius-Clapeyron slope (Scheff and Frierson, 2013). Projected changes in evapotranspiration demand and aridity provides profound implications that may be useful for future water resource management, agriculture and ecosystem structure and function.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Yin

et al. 2015

Intl Journal of Climatology

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ABSTRACT:The effects of aridity on ecosystems and water cycles are pronounced and have received considerable attention. However, aridity changes due to future warming and its regional variability over China remain uncertain. This paper aims to identify the spatiotemporal variations in aridity and its key influencing factors over China in the mid-21st century based on five general circulation models (GCMs) and four representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios. An aridity index (AI), defined as the ratio of reference evapotranspiration (ET o ) to precipitation (P), was calculated. We show that the GCM ensemble means are able to reproduce the variation of aridity during the baseline period. Generally, ET o anomalies are consistently positive. Other than for the RCP2.6 low-emission scenario, precipitation and aridity are both projected to increase. There are pronounced regional differences in aridity changes; i.e. wetter across most of western China and drier across most of eastern China in the mid-21st century. Negative AI anomalies in western China can be attributed mainly to the projected increase in precipitation. In eastern China, the AI was higher despite positive precipitation anomalies, due mainly to the greater effect of climate change on increasing atmospheric moisture demand. This suggests that evapotranspiration demand should be incorporated into aridity changes under future warming.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Yin

et al. 2015

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…It has been shown that there is little cancellation of the air temperature and relative humidity terms when studying both historical data and future climate projections (Scheff and Frierson, 2014). The relative humidity annual means, mean monthly climatology and seasonal trends can be seen in Fig. 14.…”

Section: Relative Humiditymentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in atmospheric evaporative demand in Great Britain using high-resolution meteorological data

Robinson

Blyth

Clark

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Observations of climate are often available on very different spatial scales from observations of the natural environments and resources that are affected by climate change. In order to help bridge the gap between these scales using modelling, a new dataset of daily meteorological variables was created at 1 km resolution over Great Britain for the years 1961-2012, by interpolating coarser resolution climate data and including the effects of local topography. These variables were used to calculate atmospheric evaporative demand (AED) at the same spatial and temporal resolution. Two functions that represent AED were chosen: one is a standard form of potential evapotranspiration (PET) and the other is a derived PET measure used by hydrologists that includes the effect of water intercepted by the canopy (PETI). Temporal trends in these functions were calculated, with PET found to be increasing in all regions, and at an overall rate of 0.021 ± 0.021 mm day −1 decade −1 in Great Britain. PETI was found to be increasing at a rate of 0.019 ± 0.020 mm day −1 decade −1 in Great Britain, but this was not statistically significant. However, there was a trend in PETI in England of 0.023 ± 0.023 mm day −1 decade −1 . The trends were found to vary by season, with spring PET increasing by 0.043 ± 0.019 mm day −1 decade −1 (0.038 ± 0.018 mm day −1 decade −1 when the interception correction is included) in Great Britain, while there is no statistically significant trend in other seasons. The trends were attributed analytically to trends in the climate variables; the overall positive trend was predominantly driven by rising air temperature, although rising specific humidity had a negative effect on the trend. Recasting the analysis in terms of relative humidity revealed that the overall effect is that falling relative humidity causes the PET to rise. Increasing downward short-and longwave radiation made an overall positive contribution to the PET trend, while decreasing wind speed made a negative contribution to the trend in PET. The trend in spring PET was particularly strong due to a strong decrease in relative humidity and increase in downward shortwave radiation in the spring.

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“…Schellekens et al, 2017) or actual evaporation as well as in drought severity indices (VicenteSerrano et al, 2013;Sheffield et al, 2012). Changes in Ep have been regarded as the main driver of ecosystem distribution and aridity (Scheff and Frierson, 2013) and are used to estimate the influence of climate change on 30 ecosystems based on climate models projections (e.g. Milly and Dunne, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential evaporation at eddy-covariance sites across the globe

Maes¹,

Gentine²,

Verhoest³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Potential evaporation (Ep) is a crucial variable for hydrological forecast and in drought monitoring systems. However, multiple interpretations of Ep exist, and these reflect a diverse range of methods to calculateEp. As such, a comparison of the performance of these methods against field observations in different global ecosystems is badly needed. In this study, we used eddy-covariance measurements from 107 sites of the FLUXNET2015 database, covering 11 different biomes, to parameterize and compare the main Ep methods and 10 uncover their relative performance. For each site, we extracted the days for which ecosystems are unstressed based on both an energy balance approach and on a soil water content approach. The evaporation measurements during these days were used as reference to validate the different methods to estimate Ep. Our results indicate that a simple radiation-driven method calibrated per biome consistently performed best, with a mean correlation of 0.93, an unbiased RMSE of 0.56 mm day -1, and a bias of -0.02 mm day -1 against in situ measurements of unstressed 15 evaporation. A Priestley and Taylor method, calibrated per biome, performed just slightly worse, yet substantially and consistently better than more complex Penman, Penman-Monteith-based or temperature-based approaches.We show that the poor performance of Penman-Monteith based approaches relates largely to the fact that the unstressed stomatal conductance was assumed constant. Further analysis showed that the biome-specific parameters required for the simple radiation-driven methods are relatively constant per biome. This makes this 20 simple radiation-driven method calibrated per biome a robust method that can be incorporated into models for improving our understanding of the impact of global warming on future global water use and demand, drought severity and ecosystem productivity.

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Scaling Potential Evapotranspiration with Greenhouse Warming

Cited by 247 publications

References 26 publications

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Projections of aridity and its regional variability over China in the mid‐21st century

Trends in atmospheric evaporative demand in Great Britain using high-resolution meteorological data

Potential evaporation at eddy-covariance sites across the globe

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