1Land-Atmosphere Interaction and its Climatic Effects Group, State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
2College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
3College of Atmospheric Science, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
4National Observation and Research Station for Qomolongma Special Atmospheric Processes and Environmental Changes, Dingri 858200, China
5Kathmandu Center of Research and Education, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
6China-Pakistan Joint Research Center on Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan
1Land-Atmosphere Interaction and its Climatic Effects Group, State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
2College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
3College of Atmospheric Science, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
4National Observation and Research Station for Qomolongma Special Atmospheric Processes and Environmental Changes, Dingri 858200, China
5Kathmandu Center of Research and Education, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
6China-Pakistan Joint Research Center on Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan
Received: 07 Jun 2022 – Discussion started: 03 Aug 2022
Abstract. Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component of the water balance system in the “Asian water tower” region, the Tibetan Plateau (TP). However, accurately monitoring and understanding the spatial and temporal variability of the ET components (soil evaporation Es, canopy transpiration Ec, and intercepted water evaporation Ew) on the TP remains gravely challenging due to the paucity of observational data for this remote area. In this study, the 37 years (1982–2018) of monthly ET component data for the TP were produced using the MOD16-STM model, which uses the recently available soil properties, meteorological conditions, and remote sensing datasets. The estimated ET results correlate very well with the measurements from nine flux towers, with a low root mean square error of 13.48 mm/month, mean bias of 2.85 mm/month, coefficient of determination of 0.83, and index of agreement of 0.92. The annual average ET for the entire TP (specified as elevations higher than 2500 m) is about 0.93 ± 0.037 Gt/year. The main contribution of the ET on the TP comes from the soil, with the Es accounting for more than 84 % of the ET. During the study period, the ET exhibited a significant increasing trend, with rates of about 1–4 mm/year (p < 0.05), over most parts of the central and eastern TP and a significant decreasing trend, with rates of −3 to −1 mm/year, over the northwestern TP. The rate of increase in the ET on the TP over the past 37 years was around 0.96 mm/year. The increase in the ET over the entire TP from 1982 to 2018 can be explained by the warming and wetting trend of the climate on the TP during this period. The MOD16-STM ET data exhibited an acceptable performance over the TP compared with previous results. The MOD16-STM ET can adequately represent the actual ET and can be used for research on water resource management, drought monitoring, and ecological change. The whole datasets are freely available at the Science Data Bank (http://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.00020, Y. Ma, X.Chen, L. Yuan, 2021) and the National Tibetan Plateau Data Center (TPDC) (http://doi.org/10.11888/Terre.tpdc.271913, L. Yuan, X.Chen, Y. Ma, 2021).
Long term variations of monthly terrestrial evapotranspiration over the Tibetan Plateau (1982-2018)Yaoming Ma, Xuelong Chen, Ling Yuan http://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.00020
Significantly increased evapotranspiration reveals accelerated water cycle on the Tibetan Plateau during 1982–2018Ling Yuan, Xuelong Chen, Ma Yaoming http://doi.org/10.11888/Terre.tpdc.271913
Ling Yuan et al.
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Accurately monitoring and understanding the spatial and temporal variability of the ET components over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) remains difficult. Here, 37 years (1982–2018) of monthly ET component data for the TP were produced, and is very consistent with the measurements .The annual average ET for the entire TP was about 0.93 ± 0.037 Gt/year. The rate of increase of the ET was around 0.96 mm/year. The increase in the ET can be explained by warming and wetting of the climate.
Accurately monitoring and understanding the spatial and temporal variability of the ET...