Stomatal response to decreased relative humidity constrains the acceleration of terrestrial evapotranspiration
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15545700 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mingzhong Xiao (0000-0002-9462-2577, Hohai University, corresponding author), Zhongbo Yu (0000-0002-3471-8577, Hohai University), Dongdong Kong (0000-0003-1836-8172, Sun Yat-sen University), Xihui Gu (0000-0002-7414-5371, China University of Geosciences), Ivan Mammarella (0000-0002-8516-3356, University of Helsinki), Leonardo Montagnani (0000-0003-2957-9071, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano), M ALTAF ARAIN (0000-0002-1433-5173, McMaster University), Lutz Merbold (0000-0003-4974-170X, ETH Zurich), Vincenzo Magliulo (0000-0001-5505-6552, Istituto per il Sistema Produzione Animale in Ambiente Mediterraneo), Annalea Lohila (0000-0003-3541-672X, Finnish Meteorological Institute), Nina Buchmann (0000-0003-0826-2980, ETH Zurich), Sebastian Wolf (0000-0003-3466-8458, ETH Zurich), Mana Gharun (0000-0003-0337-7367, ETH Zurich), Lukas Hörtnagl (0000-0002-5569-0761, ETH Zurich), Jason Beringer (0000-0002-4619-8361, The University of Western Australia), Beniamino Gioli (0000-0001-7631-2623) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 094066-094066 |
| Publication date | 2020-06-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Research Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326 |
| Publisher | IOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1088/1748-9326/ab9967 |
| OpenAlex | W3033608105 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 51 |
Terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) is thermodynamically expected to increase with increasing atmospheric temperature; however, the actual constraints on the intensification of ET remain uncertain due to a lack of direct observations. Based on the FLUXNET2015 Dataset, we found that relative humidity (RH) is a more important driver of ET than temperature. While actual ET decrease at reduced RH, potential ET increases, consistently with the complementary relationship (CR) framework stating that the fraction of energy not used for actual ET is dissipated as increased sensible heat flux that in turn increases potential ET. In this study, we proposed an improved CR formulation requiring no parameter calibration and assessed its reliability in estimating ET both at site-level with the FLUXNET2015 Dataset and at basin-level. Using the ERA-Interim meteorological dataset for 1979–2017 to calculate ET, we found that the global terrestrial ET showed an increasing trend until 1998, while the trend started to decline afterwards. Such decline was largely associated with a reduced RH, inducing water stress conditions that triggered stomatal closure to conserve water. For the first time, this study quantified the global-scale implications of changes in RH on terrestrial ET, indicating that the temperature-driven acceleration of the terrestrial water cycle will be likely constrained by terrestrial vegetation feedbacks
Atmospheric sciences · Climate change · Climatology · Ecosystem · Evapotranspiration · Geography · Humidity · Meteorology · Relative humidity · Terrestrial ecosystem · Vegetation (pathology · Water cycle · Climate variability and models · Environmental Science · Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies · Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics · Ecology · Geology
Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply
Variable Importance Assessment in Regression
Increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit reduces global vegetation growth
Evidence for intensification of the global water cycle
Natural evaporation from open water, bare soil and grass
GLEAM v3
Estimating regression models with unknown break‐points
The Global Land Data Assimilation System
Bias in random forest variable importance measures
Ranger
Global Hydrological Cycles and World Water Resources
Random Forests
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |