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Trend analysis of evapotranspiration over India: Observed from long-term satellite measurements

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Abstract

Owing to the lack of consistent spatial time series data on actual evapotranspiration (ET), very few studies have been conducted on the long-term trend and variability in ET at a national scale over the Indian subcontinent. The present study uses biome specific ET data derived from NOAA satellite’s advanced very high resolution radiometer to investigate the trends and variability in ET over India from 1983 to 2006. Trend analysis using the non-parametric Mann–Kendall test showed that the domain average ET decreased during the period at a rate of \(0.22\,\hbox {mm year}^{-1}\). A strong decreasing trend (\(m = -1.75\, \hbox {mm year}^{-1}\), \(F = 17.41\), \(P\) 0.01) was observed in forest regions. Seasonal analyses indicated a decreasing trend during southwest summer monsoon (\(m= -0.320\, \hbox {mm season}^{-1}\,\hbox {year}^{-1})\) and post-monsoon period (\(m= -0.188\, \hbox {mm season}^{-1 }\,\hbox {year}^{-1})\). In contrast, an increasing trend was observed during northeast winter monsoon (\(m = 0.156 \,\hbox {mm season}^{-1 }\,\hbox {year}^{-1})\) and pre-monsoon (\(m = 0.068\, \hbox {mm season}^{-1 }\,\hbox {year}^{-1})\) periods. Despite an overall net decline in the country, a considerable increase ( \(4 \,\hbox {mm year}^{-1}\)) was observed over arid and semi-arid regions. Grid level correlation with various climatic parameters exhibited a strong positive correlation (\(r \!>\!0.5\)) of ET with soil moisture and precipitation over semi-arid and arid regions, whereas a negative correlation (\(r\) \(-0.5\)) occurred with temperature and insolation in dry regions of western India. The results of this analysis are useful for understanding regional ET dynamics and its relationship with various climatic parameters over India. Future studies on the effects of ET changes on the hydrological cycle, carbon cycle, and energy partitioning are needed to account for the feedbacks to the climate.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out under ISRO-GBP EMEVS Project. Authors are thankful to Director, Space Applications Centre, ISRO Ahmedabad. SKG wishes to acknowledge the fellowship granted by SAC to carry out the research. The authors are grateful to NTSG, University of Montana for providing evapotranspiration data. We would like to thank IMD, CPC and GES DISC for providing climate datasets. We sincerely thank Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for providing Decadal Land Use and Land Cover Classifications across India. We are also thankful to Goddard-Institute-Space-Studies for providing panoply software. We express our gratitude to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which improved the manuscript substantially.

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  1. Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad, 380 015, India

    Sheshakumar Goroshi, Rohit Pradhan, Raghavendra P Singh & Jai Singh Parihar

  2. India Meteorological Department, New Delhi, 110 003, India

    K K Singh

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  1. Sheshakumar Goroshi
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Goroshi, S., Pradhan, R., Singh, R.P. et al. Trend analysis of evapotranspiration over India: Observed from long-term satellite measurements. J Earth Syst Sci 126, 113 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-017-0891-2

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