H33L-08 – Disentangling climatic and anthropogenic controls on global terrestrial evapotranspiration trends

Authors

Jiafu Mao
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Wenting Fu
University of Texas Austin
Xiaoying Shi
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Daniel Ricciuto
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Joshua Fisher
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Robert Dickinson
University of Texas Austin
Yaxing Wei
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Willis Shem
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Shilong Piao
Peking University
Kaicun Wang
Beijing Normal University
Christopher Schwalm
Federal GEOS Funding
Hanqin Tian
Auburn University Montgomery
Mingquan Mu
University of California Irvine
Muhammad Atlaf Arain
McMaster University
Philippe Ciais
LSCE Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement
Robert Cook
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Yong Jiu Dai
Beijing Normal University
Daniel Hayes
University of Maine
Forrest Hoffman (forrest at climatemodeling dot org)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Maoyi Huang
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Suo Huang
McMaster University
Deborah Huntzinger
Northern Arizona University
Akihiko Ito
NIES National Institute of Environmental Studies
Atul Jain
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Anthony King
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Huimin Lei
Tsinghua University
Chaoqun Lu
Iowa State University
Anna Michalak
Carnegie Institution for Science Washington
Nicholas Parazoo
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Changhu Peng
University of Quebec at Montreal
Shushi Peng
LSCE Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement
Benjamin Poulter
Montana State University
Kevin Schaefer
University of Colorado
Elchin Jafarov
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research
Peter Thornton
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Weile Wang
CSUMB & NASA/AMES
Ning Zeng
University of Maryland College Park
Zhenzhong Zeng
Peking University
Fang Zhao
University of Maryland College Park
Qiuan Zhu
Northwast A&F University
Zaichun Zhu
Peking University

Session

Evapotranspiration, Evaporative Demand, and Droughts: From Empirical Shortcuts to Process-Based Understanding II
Wednesday, December 16, 2015 15:25–15:40
Moscone West 3022

Abstract

We examined natural and anthropogenic controls on terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) changes from 1982–2010 using multiple estimates from remote sensing-based datasets and process-oriented land surface models. A significant increased trend of ET in each hemisphere was consistently revealed by observationally-constrained data and multi-model ensembles that considered historic natural and anthropogenic drivers. The climate impacts were simulated to determine the spatiotemporal variations in ET. Globally, rising CO2 ranked second in these models after the predominant climatic influences, and yielded decreased trends in canopy transpiration and ET, especially for tropical forests and high-latitude shrub land. Increased nitrogen deposition slightly amplified global ET via enhanced plant growth. Land-use-induced ET responses, albeit with substantial uncertainties across the factorial analysis, were minor globally, but pronounced locally, particularly over regions with intensive land-cover changes. Our study highlights the importance of employing multi-stream ET and ET-component estimates to quantify the strengthening anthropogenic fingerprint in the global hydrologic cycle.


Forrest M. Hoffman (forrest at climatemodeling dot org)