Abstract
Whether the evaporation paradox exists or not is crucial for an improvement of water resource management on the Chinese Loess Plateau that has long been suffering from water scarcity. An in-depth understanding on long-term changes in evaporation and its attribution would be beneficial for a clear identification of evaporation paradox. However, the long-term and large-scale studies on evaporation variations were severely lacking on the Loess Plateau. This study examined both spatial and temporal variations in pan evaporation at 52 meteorological stations widespread on the Loess Plateau during 1961–2015. The Mann–Kendall test showed that significant decreases occurred in annual and seasonal pan evaporation (p < 0.05). A principal component analysis indicated that regional-averaged annual pan evaporation experienced a decreasing trend in all three regions (the southwestern, southeastern and the northern regions of the Loess Plateau) with a decreasing rate ranging from −1.83 to −5.18 mm/a (p < 0.05). The annual pan evaporation averaged across all the observations decreased significantly, whereas the average annual temperature increased, indicating the occurrence of a pan evaporation paradox on the Loess Plateau. Our results also showed that the pan evaporation was mostly sensitive to actual vapor pressure (ea), followed by solar radiation (Rs), mean temperature (Tmean) and wind speed (U2). An increase in temperature resulted in an elevated pan evaporation; however, this was offset by an increase in vapor pressure and a decrease in wind speed and solar radiation. Wind speed was the dominant factor contributing to the pan evaporation decrease on the Loess Plateau. The results provided a useful reference for a more effective regional water resource management and ecological restoration.
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Acknowledgements
The work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42077076; 41977059). The authors are very grateful to the National Climatic Centre for providing valuable climate data and help from Dr. Dan Zhang in Nanjing Institute of Geography & Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The authors are also thankful for the very valuable comments from reviewers which greatly improved the quality of the paper.
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Hu, J., Zhao, G., Li, P. et al. Variations of pan evaporation and its attribution from 1961 to 2015 on the Loess Plateau, China. Nat Hazards 111, 1199–1217 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-05091-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-05091-z