Projecting and Attributing Future Changes of Evaporative Demand over China in CMIP5 Climate Models

Abstract

Abstract Atmospheric evaporative demand plays a pivotal role in global water and energy budgets, and its change is very important for drought monitoring, irrigation scheduling, and water resource management under a changing environment. Here, future changes of pan evaporation Epan, a measurable indicator for atmospheric evaporative demand, are first projected and attributed over China through a physically based approach, namely, the PenPan model, forced with outputs from 12 state-of-the-art climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. An equidistant quantile mapping method was also used to correct the biases in GCMs outputs to reduce uncertainty in Epan projection. The results indicated that Epan would increase during the periods 2021–50 and 2071–2100 relative to the baseline period 1971–2000 under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, which can mainly be attributed to the projected increase in air temperature and vapor pressure deficit over China. The percentage increase of Epan is relatively larger in eastern China than in western China, which is due to the spatially inconsistent increases in air temperature, net radiation, wind speed, and vapor pressure deficit over China. The widely reported “pan evaporation paradox” was not well reproduced for the period 1961–2000 in the climate models, before or after bias correction, suggesting discrepancy between observed and modeled trends. With that caveat, it was found that the pan evaporation has been projected to increase at a rate of 117–167 mm yr−1 K−1 (72–80 mm yr−1 K−1) over China using the multiple GCMs under the RCP 4.5 (RCP 8.5) scenario with increased greenhouse gases and the associated warming of the climate system.