Abstract
Reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) is a key parameter in hydrological and meteorological studies. In this study, the FAO Penman–Monteith equation was used to estimate ET 0 , and the change in ET 0 was investigated in China from 1960 to 2011. The results show that a change point around the year 1993 was detected for the annual ET 0 series by the Cramer’s test. For the national average, annual ET 0 decreased significantly (P < 0.001) by −14.35 mm/decade from 1960 to 1992, while ET 0 increased significantly (P < 0.05) by 22.40 mm/decade from 1993 to 2011. A differential equation method was used to attribute the change in ET 0 to climate variables. The attribution results indicate that ET 0 was most sensitive to change in vapor pressure, followed by solar radiation, air temperature and wind speed. However, the effective impact of change in climate variable on ET 0 was the product of the sensitivity and the change rate of climate variable. During 1960–1992, the decrease in solar radiation was the main reason of the decrease in ET 0 in humid region, while decrease in wind speed was the dominant factor of decreases in ET 0 in arid region and semi-arid/semi-humid region of China. Decrease in solar radiation and/or wind speed offset the effect of increasing air temperature on ET 0 , and together led to the decrease in ET 0 from 1960 to 1992. Since 1993, the rapidly increasing air temperature was the dominant factor to the change in ET 0 in all the three regions of China, which led to the increase in ET 0 . Furthermore, the future change in ET 0 was calculated under IPCC SRES A1B and B1 scenarios with projections from three GCMs. The results showed that increasing air temperature would dominate the change in ET 0 and ET 0 would increase by 2.13–10.77, 4.42–16.21 and 8.67–21.27 % during 2020s, 2050s and 2080s compared with the average annual ET 0 during 1960–1990, respectively. The increases in ET 0 would lead to the increase in agriculture water consumption in the 21st century and may aggravate the water shortage in China.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen R G, Pereira L S, Raes D and Smith M (1998) Crop evapotranspiration-Guidelines for computing crop water requirements-FAO Irrigation and drainage paper 56. FAO, Rome, 300: 6541
Barnett DN, Brown SJ, Murphy JM, Sexton DMH, Webb MJ (2006) Quantifying uncertainty in changes in extreme event frequency in response to doubled CO2 using a large ensemble of GCM simulations. Clim Dynam 26(5):489–511
Brown LR (2011) World on the edge: how to prevent environmental and economic collapse. WW Norton & Co Inc
Brutsaert W, Parlange M (1998) Hydrologic cycle explains the evaporation paradox. Nature 396:30. doi:10.1038/23845
Burn DH, Hesch NM (2007) Trends in evaporation for the Canadian Prairies. J Hydrol 336(1):61–73
Chattopadhyay N, Hulme M (1997) Evaporation and potential evapotranspiration in India under conditions of recent and future climate change. Agric Forest Meteorol 87(1):55–73
Cong Z, Yang D, Ni G (2009) Does evaporation paradox exist in China? Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 13(3):357
Dinpashoh Y, Jhajharia D, Fakheri-Fard A, Singh VP, Kahya E (2011) Trends in reference crop evapotranspiration over Iran. J Hydrol 399:422–433
Ganji A, Ponnambalam K, Khalili D, Karamouz M (2006) Grain yield reliability analysis with crop water demand uncertainty. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 20(4):259–277
Gao C, Gemmer M, Zeng XF, Liu B, Su BD, Wen YH (2010) Projected streamflow in the Huaihe River Basin (2010–2100) using artificial neural network. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 24(5):685–697
Kay A, Davies H, Bell V, Jones R (2009) Comparison of uncertainty sources for climate change impacts: flood frequency in England. Clim Change 92(1):41–63
Kendall M (1975) Rank correlation measures. Charles Griffin, London 202
Liu X, Zhang D (2012) Trend analysis of reference evapotranspiration in Northwest China: the roles of changing wind speed and surface air temperature. Hydrol Process. doi:10.1002/hyp.9527
Liu B, Xu M, Henderson M, Gong W (2004) A spatial analysis of pan evaporation trends in China, 1955–2000. J Geophys Res 109:D15102
Liu X, Zheng H, Zhang M, Liu C (2011) Identification of dominant climate factor for pan evaporation trend in the Tibetan Plateau. J Geogr Sci 21(4):594–608
Mann HB (1945) Non-parametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259
McCuen RH (1974) A sensitivity and error analysis cf procedures used for estimating evaporation. J Am Water Resour As 10(3):486–497
Meehl G, Covey C, Delworth T, Latif M, McAvaney B, Mitchell J, Stouffer R, Taylor K (2007) The WCRP CMIP3 Multimodel Dataset: a new era in climate change research. BAMS 88:1383–1394. doi:10.1175,BAMS-88-9-1383
Nazemi A, Elshorbagy A (2012) Application of copula modelling to the performance assessment of reconstructed watersheds. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 26(2):189–205
Papaioannou G, Kitsara G and Athanasatos S (2011) Impact of global dimming and brightening on reference evapotranspiration in Greece. J Geophys Res, 116(D9): D09107
Ponce VM, Pandey RP, Ercan S (2000) Characterization of drought across climatic spectrum. J Hydrol Eng 5(2):222–224
Roderick ML, Farquhar GD (2002) The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years. Science 298(5597):1410–1411
Roderick ML, Rotstayn LD, Farquhar GD, Hobbins MT (2007) On the attribution of changing pan evaporation. Geophys Res Lett 34:L17403
Sentelhas PC, Gillespie TJ, Santos EA (2010) Evaluation of FAO Penman–Monteith and alternative methods for estimating reference evapotranspiration with missing data in Southern Ontario Canada. Agric Water Manage 97(5):635–644
Shackley S, Young P, Parkinson S, Wynne B (1998) Uncertainty, complexity and concepts of good science in climate change modelling: are GCMs the best tools? Clim Change 38(2):159–205
Shadmani M, Marofi S, Roknian M (2012) Trend analysis in reference evapotranspiration using Mann–Kendall and Spearman’s rho tests in arid regions of Iran. Water Resour Manag 26(1):211–224
Shenbin C, Yunfeng L, Thomas A (2006) Climatic change on the Tibetan Plateau: potential evapotranspiration trends from 1961–2000. Clim Change 76(3):291–319
Speranskaya NA, Zhuravin SA, Mennel MJ (2001) Evaporation changes over the contiguous United States and the former USSR: a reassessment. Geophys Res Lett 28(13):2665–2668
Stanhill G, Möller M (2008) Evaporative climate change in the British Isles. Int J Climatol 28(9):1127–1137
Tabari H, Marofi S, Aeini A, Talaee PH, Mohammadi K (2011) Trend analysis of reference evapotranspiration in the western half of Iran. Agr Forest Meteorol 151(2):128–136
Türkeş M (1996) Spatial and temporal analysis of annual rainfall variations in Turkey. Int J Climatol 16(9):1057–1076
Wang Y, Jiang T, Bothe O, Fraedrich K (2007) Changes of pan evaporation and reference evapotranspiration in the Yangtze River basin. Theor Appl Climatol 90(1):13–23
WMO (1996), Guide to Meteorological Instruments and Methods of Observation. 6th ed. WMO Rep. 8, World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
Xu C, Gong L, Jiang T, Chen D, Singh V (2006) Analysis of spatial distribution and temporal trend of reference evapotranspiration and pan evaporation in Changjiang (Yangtze River) catchment. J Hydrol 327(1):81–93
Zhang Y, Liu C, Tang Y, Yang Y (2007) Trends in pan evaporation and reference and actual evapotranspiration across the Tibetan Plateau. J Geophys Res 112:D12110
Zhang QA, Xu CY, Chen YD, Ren LL (2011) Comparison of evapotranspiration variations between the Yellow River and Pearl River basin China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 25(2):139–150
Zheng H, Liu X, Liu C, Dai X and Zhu R (2009) Assessing contributions to panevaporation trends in Haihe River Basin China. J Geophys Res, 114(D24): D24105
Zuo D, Xu Z, Yang H, Liu X (2011) Spatiotemporal variations and abrupt changes of potential evapotranspiration and its sensitivity to key meteorological variables in the Wei River basin China. Hydrol Process 26(8):1149–1160
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the “Strategic Priority Research Program-Climate Change: Carbon Budget and Relevant Issues” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA05090309) and National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB428403).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, D., Liu, X. & Hong, H. Assessing the effect of climate change on reference evapotranspiration in China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 27, 1871–1881 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-013-0723-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-013-0723-0