Indications of increasing land surface evaporation during the second half of the 20th century

Abstract

It is generally agreed that the evaporation from pans has been decreasing for the past half century over many regions of the Earth. However, the significance of this negative trend, as regards terrestrial evaporation, is still somewhat controversial, and its implications for the global hydrologic cycle remain unclear. The controversy stems from the alternative views that these evaporative changes resulted, either from global radiative dimming, or from the complementary relationship between pan and terrestrial evaporation. Actually, these factors are not mutually exclusive but act concurrently. It is shown quantitatively that, if the presently available data records are taken at face value, despite global dimming, the observed decreases in pan evaporation are generally evidence of increased terrestrial evaporation in those regions. This is consistent with independent hydrologic budget calculations for several large river basins in the USA, and likely further evidence of an accelerating hydrologic cycle in many areas. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.