Satellite detection of increases in global land surface evapotranspiration during 1984–2007

Abstract As a key component of digital earth, remotely sensed data provides the compelling evidence that the amount of water vapour transferred from the entire global surface to the atmosphere increased from 1984 to 2007. The validation results from the earlier evapotranspiration (ET) estimation algorithm based on net radiation (R n ), Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), air temperature and diurnal air temperature range (DTaR) showed good agreement between estimated monthly ET and ground-measured ET from 20 flux towers. Our analysis indicates that the estimated actual ET has increased on average over the entire global land surface except for Antarctica during 1984–2007. However, this increasing trend disappears after 2000 and the reason may be that the decline in net radiation and NDVI during this period depleted surface soil moisture. Moreover, the good correspondence between the precipitation trend and the change in ET in arid and semi-arid regions indicated that surface moisture linked to precipitation affects ET. The input parameters R n , T air, NDVI and DTaR show substantial spatio-temporal variability that is almost consistent with that of actual ET from 1984 to 2007 and contribute most significantly to the variation in actual ET.

[1]  W. Cooper,et al.  SCIENCE IN CHINA. , 1940, Science.

[2]  C. Priestley,et al.  On the Assessment of Surface Heat Flux and Evaporation Using Large-Scale Parameters , 1972 .

[3]  C. Tucker.  Red and photographic infrared linear combinations for monitoring vegetation , 1979 .

[4]  Youshouzhai Gu.  Echo , 1980, The Craft of Poetry.

[5]  M. Turner,et al.  LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY : The Effect of Pattern on Process 1 , 2002 .

[6]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical Recipes: FORTRAN , 1988 .

[7]  T. Peterson,et al.  Evaporation losing its strength , 1995, Nature.

[8]  William H. Press,et al.  In: Numerical Recipes in Fortran 90 , 1996 .

[9]  Mike Hulme,et al.  Evaporation and potential evapotranspiration in India under conditions of recent and future climate change , 1997 .

[10]  M. B. Parlange,et al.  Hydrologic cycle explains the evaporation paradox , 1998, Nature.

[11]  Yann Kerr,et al.  IRSUTE: A Minisatellite Project for Land Surface Heat Flux Estimation from Field to Regional Scale , 1999 .

[12]  Axel Thomas,et al.  Spatial and temporal characteristics of potential evapotranspiration trends over China , 2000 .

[13]  Thomas C. Peterson,et al.  Evaporation changes over the contiguous United States and the former USSR: A reassessment , 2001 .

[14]  Paul C.D. Milly,et al.  Trends in evaporation and surface cooling in the Mississippi River Basin , 2001 .

[15]  Gerald Stanhill,et al.  Evaporative climate changes at Bet Dagan, Israel, 1964–1998 , 2002 .

[16]  V. Arora.  MODELING VEGETATION AS A DYNAMIC COMPONENT IN SOIL‐VEGETATION‐ATMOSPHERE TRANSFER SCHEMES AND HYDROLOGICAL MODELS , 2002 .

[17]  Zhilin Zhu,et al.  A remote sensing model for monitoring soil evaporation based on differential thermal inertia and its validation , 2003, Science in China Series D Earth Sciences.

[18]  A. Betts,et al.  Evaluation of the ERA-40 Surface Water Budget and Surface Temperature for the Mackenzie River Basin , 2003 .

[19]  R. Fernandes,et al.  Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ based accuracy assessment of leaf area index products for Canada derived from SPOT-4 VEGETATION data , 2003 .

[20]  C. Tucker,et al.  Climate-Driven Increases in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 1982 to 1999 , 2003, Science.

[21]  J.-Y. Parlange,et al.  Increasing Evapotranspiration from the Conterminous United States , 2004 .

[22]  Mark Henderson,et al.  A spatial analysis of pan evaporation trends in China, 1955–2000 , 2004 .

[23]  Junichi Yoshitani,et al.  Time-Space Trend Analysis in Pan Evaporation over Kingdom of Thailand , 2005 .

[24]  W. Steffen,et al.  Human modification of global water vapor flows from the land surface. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[25]  E. Dutton,et al.  Do Satellites Detect Trends in Surface Solar Radiation? , 2004, Science.

[26]  S. Nigam,et al.  Warm Season Rainfall Variability over the U.S. Great Plains in Observations, NCEP and ERA-40 Reanalyses, and NCAR and NASA Atmospheric Model Simulations , 2005 .

[27]  Chong-Yu Xu,et al.  Comparison of the Thornthwaite method and pan data with the standard Penman-Monteith estimates of reference evapotranspiration in China , 2005 .

[28]  Edwin W. Pak,et al.  An extended AVHRR 8‐km NDVI dataset compatible with MODIS and SPOT vegetation NDVI data , 2005 .

[29]  Jun Asanuma,et al.  Energy partitioning and its biophysical controls above a grazing steppe in central Mongolia , 2006 .

[30]  Deliang Chen,et al.  Decreasing reference evapotranspiration in a warming climate—A case of Changjiang (Yangtze) River catchment during 1970–2000 , 2006 .

[31]  Wilfried Brutsaert,et al.  Indications of increasing land surface evaporation during the second half of the 20th century , 2006 .

[32]  Jing M. Chen,et al.  Locally adjusted cubic-spline capping for reconstructing seasonal trajectories of a satellite-derived surface parameter , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[33]  Jennifer C. Adam,et al.  Evaluation of surface water fluxes of the pan‐Arctic land region with a land surface model and ERA‐40 reanalysis , 2006 .

[34]  Liao Yao-ming,et al.  Spatial and temporal variations and controlling factors of potential evapotranspiration in China: 1956-2000 , 2006 .

[35]  P. Jones,et al.  Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: A new data set from 1850 , 2006 .

[36]  Chong-Yu Xu,et al.  Trend of estimated actual evapotranspiration over China during 1960-2002 , 2007 .

[37]  Zhanqing Li,et al.  A simple method to estimate actual evapotranspiration from a combination of net radiation, vegetation index, and temperature , 2007 .

[38]  S. Liang,et al.  An improved method for estimating global evapotranspiration based on satellite determination of surface net radiation, vegetation index, temperature, and soil moisture , 2008, IGARSS 2008 - 2008 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[39]  S. Goetz,et al.  Satellite based analysis of northern ET trends and associated changes in the regional water balance from 1983 to 2005 , 2008 .

[40]  Martin Wild,et al.  Combined surface solar brightening and increasing greenhouse effect support recent intensification of the global land‐based hydrological cycle , 2008 .

[41]  Shunlin Liang,et al.  An improved method for estimating global evapotranspiration based on satellite determination of surface net radiation, vegetation index, temperature, and soil moisture , 2008, IGARSS 2008 - 2008 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[42]  Martin Wild,et al.  Global dimming and brightening: A review , 2009 .

[43]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  A regional perspective on trends in continental evaporation , 2009 .

[44]  R. Dickinson,et al.  Evidence for decadal variation in global terrestrial evapotranspiration between 1982 and 2002: 1. Model development , 2010 .

[45]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply , 2010, Nature.

[46]  Shunlin Liang,et al.  Evidence for decadal variation in global terrestrial evapotranspiration between 1982 and 2002: 2. Results , 2010 .

[47]  Lin Li,et al.  Assessment of Three Satellite-Estimated Land Surface Downwelling Shortwave Irradiance Data Sets , 2010, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.

[48]  S. Running,et al.  A continuous satellite‐derived global record of land surface evapotranspiration from 1983 to 2006 , 2010 .

[49]  P. Ciais,et al.  The impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in China , 2010, Nature.

[50]  Maosheng Zhao,et al.  Drought-Induced Reduction in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 2000 Through 2009 , 2010, Science.

[51]  Xiaotong Zhang,et al.  Review on Estimation of Land Surface Radiation and Energy Budgets From Ground Measurement, Remote Sensing and Model Simulations , 2010, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

[52]  Qiming Qin,et al.  Monitoring Drought over the Conterminous United States Using MODIS and NCEP Reanalysis-2 Data , 2010 .

[53]  Shaohua Zhao,et al.  onitoring global land surface drought based on a hybrid vapotranspiration model , 2011 .