Terrestrial Water Loss at Night: Global Relevance from Observations and Climate Models

Abstract. Nocturnal water loss (NWL) from the surface into the atmosphere is often overlooked because of the absence of solar radiation to drive evapotranspiration and the measuring difficulties involved. However, there is growing evidence that suggests NWL – and particularly nocturnal transpiration – represents a considerable fraction of the daily values. Here we provide a global overview of the characteristics of NWL based on latent heat flux estimates from the FLUXNET2015 dataset, as well as from simulations of global climate models. Eddy-covariance measurements at 99 sites indicate that on average NWL represents 6.3 % of total evapotranspiration. There are six sites where NWL is higher than 15 %; these are mountain forests with considerable NWL during winter related to snowy and windy conditions. Higher vapor pressure deficit, wind speed and soil moisture are related to higher NWL, although this is not consistent across all sites. On the other hand, the global multi-model mean of terrestrial NWL is 7.9 % of total evapotranspiration. The spread of the model ensemble, however, is greater than 20 % over 70 % of the land area. Finally, the multi-model mean of future projections indicates an increase of NWL everywhere by an average of 1.8 %, but the spread between models at individual locations is often twice as large at least. Overall, this study highlights the relevance of water loss during the night and opens the door to explore its influence on the water cycle and the climate system under present and future conditions.

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