Probabilistic estimates of future changes in evaporation from the Caspian Sea based on multimodel ensembles of CMIP6 projections

Abstract

AbstractThe Caspian Sea level (CSL) is strongly sensitive to climate‐induced changes in its water balance components, especially evaporation from its surface as the main expenditure component of the Caspian Sea's (CS) water budget. Projecting evaporation and determining associated uncertainties obtained from such studies are critical for reliably predicting future CSL fluctuations and developing mitigation and adaptation strategies. This paper studies the projected changes in evaporation from the CS using 18 global climate models (GCMs) from the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) and Meyer's semi‐empirical formula. Future evaporation projections are constructed employing a weighted combination of the top‐ranked GCMs, including all ensemble members of selected individual models in a probabilistic framework. This study estimates late 21st century median evaporation of 945, 1016, 1105 and 1173 mm under the low‐emission, medium‐emission, medium‐to‐high emission and high‐emission scenarios, respectively. The weighted multimodel ensemble suggests CS's annual mean evaporation is projected to substantially increase by 3.9%, 13.2%, 20% and 27.9% under SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5, SSP3‐7.0 and SSP5‐8.5, respectively, for the late 21st century against the reference period. According to the spatial distribution of evaporation, arid eastern regions of CS experience higher evaporation than semi‐arid western and southwestern temperate regions. Additionally, the northwestern continental regions experience the least evaporation over the CS.