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Annual actual evapotranspiration in inland river catchments of China based on the Budyko framework

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Abstract

By investigating long time series of climate and discharge data set were collected from 68 inland river catchments in China, we analyzed the spatial and temporal variations of the annual actual evapotranspiration (AE, mm/year) using the Budyko hypothesis. A simple parameterization estimated parameter \(\bar{w}\) model (SMR Model, \(\bar{w}\) parameter for the Fu’s equation, one form of the Budyko hypothesis), was proposed using a dataset of 68 catchment independently and combined based on the landscape characteristics [Relative soil water storage \(\left( {\frac{{S_{max} }}{{\overline{ET}_{0} }}} \right)\), catchment areas (A) and average slope (tanβ)], this model explains 58.3 % of observed variance (the optimized \(\bar{w}\)) with the root-mean-square error of 0.24. The Budyko hypothesis with estimated parameter \(\bar{w}\) reproduced observed mean annual AE well for the combined 68 catchments. The estimated mean annual AE for 68 catchments showed remarkable agreement with that derived from the long-term water balance with the determining coefficient of R 2 = 0.918. This implies that Budyko hypothesis can be used for estimating AE accurately in inland river catchments, and it is especially useful for estimates in ungauged catchments.

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Acknowledgments

The research is financially supported by the Basic Research Operating Expenses of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91437109), Central level Non-profit Research Institutes (IDM201506), China Desert Meteorological Science Research Foundation (SQJ2015012), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41375101), and National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program: 2010CB951001). We would like to thank the NCC of CMA for providing valuable climate datasets. The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. George Christakos, four anonymous reviewers for their professional comments and suggestions, which are greatly helpful for further improvement of the quality of our paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Desert Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Ürümqi, 830002, China

    Junqiang Yao, Weiyi Mao & Qing Yang

  2. College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xinbing Xu

  3. Xinjiang Normal University, Ürümqi, 830054, China

    Xinbing Xu

  4. College of Resources and Environment Sciences, Key Laboratory of Oasis Ecology of Ministry of Education, Xinjiang University, Ürümqi, 830046, China

    Zhihui Liu

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  1. Junqiang Yao
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Correspondence to Junqiang Yao.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

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Table 1 Basic characteristics of the 68 study catchments
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Yao, J., Mao, W., Yang, Q. et al. Annual actual evapotranspiration in inland river catchments of China based on the Budyko framework. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 31, 1409–1421 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-016-1271-1

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