Pan evaporation modelling and changing attribution analysis on the Tibetan Plateau (1970–2012) |
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| Authors: | Hong Xie Xuan Zhu Dao‐Yang Yuan |
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| Institution: | 1. China Earthquake Administration, Lanzhou Institute of Seismology, Lanzhou, China;2. Lanzhou National Geophysical observatory, Lanzhou, China;3. School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia |
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| Abstract: | Pan evaporation (Ep) is an important indicator of water and energy and the decline of Ep has been reported in many regions over the last decades. The climate and Ep are dependent on each other. In this study, the temporal trends of Ep and main Ep drivers, namely mean air temperature (Ta), wind speed (u), global solar radiation (Rs), net long‐wave radiation(Rnl) and vapour pressure deficit (D) from 1970 to 2012, were calculated on the basis of 26 meteorological stations on the Tibetan Plateau. The arithmetic average of Ep from 26 stations decreased with the rate of ?11.91 mm a?2; the trends of Rs, Rnl, Ta, u and D were ?1.434 w m?2 decade?1, 0.2511 w m?2 decade?1, 0.3590°C decade?1, ?0.2376 m s?1 decade?1 and 9.523 Pa decade?1, respectively. The diffuse irradiance is an essential parameter to model Ep and quantify the contribution of climatic factors to changing Ep. 60 724 observations of Rs and diffuse solar irradiance (Rd) from seven of the 26 stations were used to develop the correlation between the diffuse fraction (Rd/Rs), and the clearness index (Rs/Ro). On the basis of the estimation of the diffuse component of Rs and climatic data, we modified the PenPan model to estimate Chinese micro‐pan evaporation (Ep) and assess the attribution of Ep dynamics using partial derivatives. The results showed that there was a good agreement between the observed and calculated daily Ep values. The observed decrease in Ep was mostly due to declining wind speed (?13.7 mm a?2) with some contributions from decreasing solar irradiance (?3.1 mm a?2); and the increase of temperature had a large positive effect (4.55 mm a?2) in total whilst the increase of Rnl had insignificant effect (0.35 mm a?2) on Ep rates. The change of Ep is the net result of all the climatic variables. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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| Keywords: | pan evaporation Tibetan Plateau climatic change wind speed solar radiation |
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