A past, present and future perspective on the European summer vapour pressure deficit
- 1Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven, 27570, Germany
- 2Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (IMAU), Department of Physics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
- 3Faculty of Forestry, Ștefan cel Mare University, Suceava, 720229, Romania
- 4German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, 14473, Germany
- 5Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
- 6Institute of Bio- and Geosciences IBG-3, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich 52428, Germany
- 7Physics Department, University of Bremen, Bremen, 28359, Germany
- 8Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin, 14195, Germany
- 9Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology, Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, 400006, Romania
- 1Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven, 27570, Germany
- 2Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (IMAU), Department of Physics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
- 3Faculty of Forestry, Ștefan cel Mare University, Suceava, 720229, Romania
- 4German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, 14473, Germany
- 5Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
- 6Institute of Bio- and Geosciences IBG-3, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich 52428, Germany
- 7Physics Department, University of Bremen, Bremen, 28359, Germany
- 8Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin, 14195, Germany
- 9Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology, Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, 400006, Romania
Abstract. The response of evapotranspiration to anthropogenic warming is of critical importance to the water and carbon cycle. Con-flicting observations about changes of evapotranspiration stem mostly from the brevity of observations in time and space as well as a high degree of internal variability. Here we present the first gridded reconstruction of the European summer vapour pressure deficit (VPD) for the past four centuries. The gridded reconstruction is based on 26 European tree-ring oxygen iso-tope records and is performed using a Random Forest approach. Based on our reconstruction, we show that from the mid-1700s a trend towards higher VPD occurred in Central Europe and the Mediterranean region which is based on the simulta-neous increase in temperature and decrease in precipitation. This increasing VPD trend continues throughout the observation-al period and recent times. Climate model projections show this increase in VPD for the Mediterranean region continuing until the end of the 21st century, whereby the extent depends on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, pro-jected VPD in North and Central Europe shows a tendency towards higher VPD only in the highest emission scenario (the produced data is available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5958837 (Balting, D. F. et al., 2022).
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Daniel Balting et al.
Status: open (until 15 Jun 2022)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2022-47', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Mar 2022
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My comments are as following,
Topic: VPD, as a climate index to measure drought, has attracted increasing attention. Moreover, it is of great scientific and guiding significance to reflect its spatio-temporal change pattern from a longer time scale.
Research content: The spatial distribution of VPD in European summer is analyzed in three time scales. Based on the oxygen isotope records of the last 26 European tree rings, the VPD time series grid of the past 400 years was reconstructed based on the random forest. At the same time, the change of VPD at the end of 21st century is simulated based on CMIP6 data. Strong continuity of time is the main innovation of this article. Combining paleoclimate data and CMIP6 data, it expands the time range of existing research and has a strong guiding and demonstrating role.
At present, the research on paleoclimate (Quaternary) mainly focuses on the reconstruction of paleoclimate. It is innovative to combine it with VPD. The simulation of VPD in the future is also based on the latest CMIP6 data, which has a certain scientific research opportunity. The idea of this paper is ingenious, and the content involves many research fields. Combining with the current hot VPD, this paper analyzes the spatial and temporal variation characteristics of VPD in Europe from the perspective of geography, which is frontier in the field and rich in content.
Questions: The paper is well done. However, the accuracy of VPD in paleoclimate reconstruction needs to be further improved. The paleoclimate temperature is retrieved from tree rings, and VPD is estimated based on paleoclimate. Moreover, there are only 26 station data, which may affect the inversion accuracy. In addition, there are no other related indicators to verify the paleoclimate of tree ring inversion. We can compare the paleoclimate based on pollen, foraminifera, stalagmites and other indicators on the same time scale to further verify the accuracy of tree ring inversion.
Daniel Balting et al.
Data sets
A past, present and future perspective on the European summer vapour pressure deficit Balting, Daniel F.; Michel, Simon; Nagavciuc, Viorica; Helle, Gerhard; Freund, Mandy; Schleser, Gerhard H.; Steger, David N.; Lohmann, Gerrit; Ionita, Monica https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5958837
Daniel Balting et al.
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