Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Response of evapotranspiration and water availability to the changing climate in Northern Eurasia

  • Published:
Climatic Change Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Northern Eurasian ecosystems play an important role in the global climate system. Northern Eurasia (NE) has experienced dramatic climate changes during the last half of the 20th century and to present. To date, how evapotranspiration (ET) and water availability (P–ET, P: precipitation) had changed in response to the climatic change in this region has not been well evaluated. This study uses an improved version of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM) that explicitly considers ET from uplands, wetlands, water bodies and snow cover to examine temporal and spatial variations in ET, water availability and river discharge in NE for the period 1948–2009. The average ET over NE increased during the study period at a rate of 0.13 mm year−1 year−1. Over this time, water availability augmented in the western part of the region, but decreased in the eastern part. The consideration of snow sublimation substantially improved the ET estimates and highlighted the importance of snow in the hydrometeorology of NE. We also find that the modified TEM estimates of water availability in NE watersheds are in good agreement with corresponding measurements of historical river discharge before 1970. However, a systematic underestimation of river discharge occurs after 1970 indicates that other water sources or dynamics not considered by the model (e.g., melting glaciers, permafrost thawing and fires) may also be important for the hydrology of the region.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adam JC, Lettenmaier DP (2008) Application of New precipitation and reconstructed discharge products to discharge trend attribution in Northern Eurasia. J Clim 21(8):1807–1828

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adam JC, Haddeland I, Su F, Lettenmaier DP (2007) Simulation of reservoir influences on annual and seasonal discharge changes for the Lena, Yenisei, and Ob’rivers. J Geophys Res Atmos 112:D24 (1984–2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) (2005) Cambridge University Press, New York, p 1042

  • ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) (1996) Hydrology handbook. ASCE manuals and reports on engineering practice No. 28. ASCE, New York

  • Bates B, Kundzewicz ZW, Wu S, Palutikof J (2008) IPCC: Climate change and water

  • Dolman AJ, De Jeu R (2010) Evaporation in focus. Nat Geosci 3(5):296–296

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dorigo WJR, Chung D, Parinussa R, Liu Y, Wagner W, Fernández-Prieto D (2012) Evaluating global trends (1988–2010) in harmonized multi‐satellite surface soil moisture. Geophys Res Lett 39:18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Douville H, Ribes A, Decharme B, Alkama R, Sheffield J (2012) Anthropogenic influence on multidecadal changes in reconstructed global evapotranspiration. Nat Clim Chang 3:59–62

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feddes RA, Lenselink KJ (1994) Evapotranspiration. In: H.P. Ritzema (ed) Drainage principles and applications. Water Resources Pubns, Wageningen, The Netherlands, p 1125

  • Fisher JB, Tu KP, Baldocchi DD (2008) Global estimates of the land–atmosphere water flux based on monthly AVHRR and ISLSCP-II data, validated at 16 FLUXNET sites. Remote Sens Environ 112(3):901–919

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frey KE, Smith LC (2003) Recent temperature and precipitation increase in West Sibria and their association with the Arctic Oscillation. Polar Res 22(2):287–300

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Froehlich K (2000) Evaluating the water balance of inland seas using isotopic tracers: the Caspian Sea experience. Hydrol Process 14(8):1371–1383

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groisman PY, Clark EA, Kattsov VM, Lettenmaier DP et al (2009) The Northern Eurasia earth science partnership: an example of science applied to societal needs. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 5:671–688

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groisman P, Gutman G, Reissell A (2010) Introduction: climate and land-cover changes in the arctic. In: Gutman G, Reissell A (eds) Eurasian arctic land cover and land use in a changing climate. Springer, London, pp 1–8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hamed KH, Rao AR (1998) A modified Mann–Kendall trend test for autocorrelated data. J Hydrol 204:182–196

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris I, Jones P, Osborn T, Lister D (2013) Updated high‐resolution grids of monthly climatic observations–the CRU TS3. 10 dataset. Int J Climatol. doi:10.1002/joc.3711

    Google Scholar 

  • Held IM, Soden BJ (2000) Water vapor feedback and global warming. Annu Rev Energy Environ 25:441–475

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huntington TG (2006) Evidence for intensification of the global water cycle: review and synthesis. J Hydrocarb 319(1):83–95

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2013) Climate change 2013: the physical science basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers, IPCC

  • Jensen ME, Haise HR (1963) Estimating evapotranspiration from solar radiation, Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers. J Irr Drain Div 89:15–41

  • Jin Y, Schaaf CB, Woodcock CE, Gao F, Li X, Strahler AH, Lucht W, Liang S (2003a) Consistency of MODIS surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function and albedo retrievals: 1. Algorithm performance. J Geophys Res 108(D5)

  • Jin Y, Schaaf CB, Woodcock CE, Gao F, Li X, Strahler AH, Lucht W, Liang S, (2003b) Consistency of MODIS surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function and albedo retrievals: 2. Validation J Geophys Res 108(D5)

  • John R et al (2013) Vegetation response to extreme climate events on the Mongolian Plateau from 2000–2010. Environ Res Lett 8:035033

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jung M et al (2010) Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply. Nature 467(7318):951–954

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kumar S, Lawrence DM, Dirmeyer PA, Sheffield J (2014) Less reliable water availability in the 21st century climate projections. Earth’s Futur 2:152–160

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu Y, Zhuang Q, Chen M, Tchebakova N, Pan Z et al (2013) Response of evapotranspiration and water availability to changing climate and land cover on the Mongolian Plateau during the 21st century. Global Planet Chang 108:85–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McClelland JW, Holmes RM, Peterson BJ, Stieglitz M (2004) Increasing river discharge in the Eurasian Arctic: consideration of dams, permafrost thaw, and fires as potential agents of change. J Geophys Res-Atmos 109:D18 (1984–2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mengelkamp H-T et al (2006) Evaporation over a heterogeneous land surface: the EVA-GRIPS project. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 87:775–786

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miralles DG, De Jeu RAM, Gash JH, Holmes TRH, Dolman AJ (2011a) Magnitude and variability of land evaporation and its components at the global scale. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 15(3):967–981

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miralles DG, De Jeu RAM, Gash JH, Holmes TRH, Dolman AJ (2011b) Global land-surface evaporation estimated from satellite-based observations. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 15(2):453–469

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohamed YA, Bastiaanssen WGM, Savenije HHG, van den Hurk BJJM, Finlayson CM (2012) Wetland versus open water evaporation: an analysis and literature review. Phys Chem Earth 47–48:114–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monteith JL (1965) Evaporation and environment. Symp Soc Exp Biol 19:205–224

    Google Scholar 

  • Mu Q, Zhao M, Running SW (2011) Improvements to a MODIS global terrestrial evapotranspiration algorithm. Remote Sens Environ 115(8):1781–1800

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mueller B et al (2013) Benchmark products for land evapotranspiration: LandFlux-EVAL multi-dataset synthesis. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 17:3707–3720

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • NEESPI (2004) The Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI), Executive Overview

  • Pan Y, Mcguire AD, Kicklighter DW, Melillo JM (1996) The importance of climate and soils for estimates of net primary production: a sensitivity analysis with the terrestrial ecosystem model. Glob Change Biol 2(1):5–23

  • Penman HL (1948) Natural evaporation from open water, bare soil and grass. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A Mathematical and Physical Sciences 193(1032):120–145

  • Penman HL (1956) Evaporation: an introductory survey. Neth J Agr Sci 4(1):9–29

  • Peterson BJ et al (2002) Increasing river discharge to the Arctic Ocean. Science 298(5601):2171–2173

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Romanou A, Tselioudis G, Zerefos CS, Clayson CA, Curry JA, Andersson A (2010) Evaporation-precipitation variability over the Mediterranean and the Black Seas from satellite and reanalysis estimates. J Clim 23(19):5268–5287

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salomon J, Schaaf CB, Strahler AH, Gao, F, Jin Y (2006) Validation of the MODIS bidirectional reflectance distribution function and albedo retrievals using combined observations from the aqua and terra platforms. IEEE Trans Geosci Remote Sens 44(6):1555–1565

  • Seneviratne SI et al (2010) Investigating soil moisture–climate interactions in a changing climate: a review. Earth Sci Rev 99:125–161

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shuttleworth WJ (1992) Evaporation. In: Maidment DR (ed) Handbook of hydrology. McGraw Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmons A et al (2004) Comparison of trends and low‐frequency variability in CRU, ERA‐40, and NCEP/NCAR analyses of surface air temperature. J Geophys Res Atmos 1984–2012:109

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephens GL et al (2012) An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations. Nat Geosci 5:691–696

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vinukollu RK, Wood EF, Ferguson CR, Fisher JB (2011) Global estimates of evapotranspiration for climate studies using multi-sensor remote sensing data: evaluation of three process-based approaches. Remote Sens Environ 115(3):801–823

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vörösmarty CJ, Federer CA, Schloss AL (1998) Potential evaporation functions compared on U.S. watersheds: possible implications for global-scale water balance and terrestrial ecosystem modeling. J Hydrol 207(3–4):147–169

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vörösmarty CJ et al (2010) Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature 467(7315):555–561

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang K, Dickinson RE (2012) A review of global terrestrial evapotranspiration: observation, modeling, climatology, and climatic variability. Rev Geophys 50:RG2005

  • Xiao J, Chen J, Davis KJ, Reichstein M (2012) Advances in upscaling of eddy covariance measurements of carbon and water fluxes. J Geophys Res 117:G00J01

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang P (1993) Model selection via multifold cross validation. Ann Stat 21(1):299–313

  • Zhuang Q, McGuire, AD, O’Neill KP, Harden JW, Romanovsky VE, Yarie J (2002) Modeling soil thermal and carbon dynamics of a fire chronosequence in interior Alaska. J Geophys Res 108

  • Zhuang Q, He J, Lu Y, Ji L, Xiao J, Luo T (2010) Carbon dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems on the Tibetan Plateau during the 20th century: an analysis with a process‐based biogeochemical model. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 19(5):649–662

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the NASA Land Use and Land Cover Change program (NASA- NNX09AI26G, NN-H-04-Z-YS-005-N, and NNX09AM55G), the Department of Energy (DE-FG02-08ER64599), the National Science Foundation (NSF-1028291 and NSF- 0919331), the NSF Carbon and Water in the Earth Program (NSF-0630319), and the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program of the NSF (#1313761).. We also acknowledge the Global Runoff Data Centre for provision of the gauge station data. Runoff data in Peterson et al. (2002) were obtained from the R-ArcticNet database. A special acknowledgment is made here to Prof. Eric Wood for his generous provision of the ET datasets of Vinukollu et al. (2011), and to Dr. Brigitte Mueller and Dr. Martin Hirsci for the provision of the LandFlux-EVAL dataset of Mueller et al. (2013). Diego Miralles acknowledges the support by the European Space Agency WACMOS-ET project (4000106711/12/I-NB).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Yaling Liu, Qianlai Zhuang & Yujie He

  2. Department of Agronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Qianlai Zhuang

  3. College of Resources & Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Zhihua Pan

  4. Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Management, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Diego Miralles

  5. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Diego Miralles

  6. V N Sukachev Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academgorodok, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

    Nadja Tchebakova

  7. The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    David Kicklighter & Jerry Melillo

  8. CGCEO/Geography, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Jiquan Chen

  9. Laboratory of Peatland Forestry and Amelioration, Institute of Forest Science, Russian, Academy of Sciences, Uspenskoye, Moscow Oblast, Russia

    Andrey Sirin

  10. Institute of Botany, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Guangsheng Zhou

Authors
  1. Yaling Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Qianlai Zhuang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Zhihua Pan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Diego Miralles
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Nadja Tchebakova
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. David Kicklighter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Jiquan Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Andrey Sirin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Yujie He
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Guangsheng Zhou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Jerry Melillo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yaling Liu.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM 1

(DOCX 5.70 mb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, Y., Zhuang, Q., Pan, Z. et al. Response of evapotranspiration and water availability to the changing climate in Northern Eurasia. Climatic Change 126, 413–427 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1234-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1234-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation