Change and attribution of pan evaporation throughout the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau during 1979–2017 using China meteorological forcing dataset

Abstract

AbstractPan evaporation (Epan) analysis in the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP) is important for improving the understanding of the climatic and environmental changes in the QTP and China. However, uneven station coverage, sparse and inconsistent observations hamper the in‐depth understanding of the spatiotemporal Epan patterns throughout the QTP over long time periods. Based on the PenPan model driven by the monthly gridded China meteorological forcing dataset, this study attempted to estimate monthly and annual grid pan evaporation (EPenPan) for the pan with a depth of 10 cm and a diameter of 20 cm at 0.1° resolution throughout the QTP and its surrounding areas during 1979–2017, then the spatiotemporal variations in EPenPan as well as the potential causative climatic variables were thoroughly examined. Results showed that the spatiotemporal patterns of EPenPan were in reasonably good agreement with the observations. The high values of mean annual EPenPan tended to distribute in the areas with water limitation or strong solar radiation like the southwest QTP. The wide decreases in annual EPenPan have reversed in the study area in around 1993, with some exceptions such as the continuous increase in the southwest QTP and monotonous decrease in the areas to the west and east of the Qaidam Basin. Comparatively, the trends in annual EPenPan in the QTP were less than the surrounding areas in the different periods, and overall accelerating annual EPenPan appeared in the both areas after 1993. With the Budyko curve, it was expected that drought severity would increase in the south of the surrounding areas in future, but the warming and wetting in the other areas would be kept. The wind speed (WS) was the primary contributor to decreasing annual EPenPan in the study area before 1993. Nevertheless, the most dominant factor for increasing EPenPan was vapour pressure deficit in the QTP and WS in the surrounding areas during 1994–2017.