The Long-Term Change of Latent Heat Flux over the Western Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has been experiencing warming and wetting since the 1980s. Under such circumstances, we estimated the summer latent heat flux (LE) using the maximum entropy production model driven by the net radiation, surface temperature, and soil moisture of three reanalysis datasets (ERA5, JRA-55, and MERRA-2) at the Ali site over the western TP during 1980–2018. Compared with the observed LE of the Third Tibetan Plateau Atmospheric Scientific Experiment, the coefficient of determination, root-mean-square error, and mean bias error of the estimated summer LE are 0.57, 9.3 W m−2, and −2.25 W m−2 during 2014–2016, respectively, which are better than those of LE of the reanalysis datasets. The estimated long-term summer LE presents a decreasing (an increasing) trend of −7.4 (1.8) W m−2 decade−1 during 1980–1991 (1992–2018). The LE variation is closely associated with the local soil moisture influenced by precipitation, glacier, and near-surface water conditions at the Ali site. The summer soil moisture also presents a decreasing (an increasing) trend of −0.082 (0.022) decade−1 during 1980–1991 (1992–2018). The normalized difference vegetation index generally shows the consistent trend with LE at the Ali site.