Exploring Surface Temperature, Evapotranspiration, and Downwelling Longwave Radiation Heterogeneity in High-Altitude Complex Terrain with ECOSTRESS
Abstract
Increasing evapotranspiration (ET) in the Colorado River Basin has recently been identified as the dominant contributor to the observed -9.3 %/°C negative trend in discharge from the river [Milly and Dunne, Science, 2020]. However, this ET change has been inferred indirectly from proxies and model simulations, and the underlying assumptions of process representations in those calculations need to be tested with data. We develop a detailed picture of the surface radiative environment in the Upper Colorado River with a particular focus on the East River Watershed near Crested Butte, Colorado with recent observations of land-surface temperature from ECOSTRESS. We characterize the spatiotemporal variability in surface temperature, ET, and downwelling longwave radiation with mosaics of ECOSTRESS observations at different local-times.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMH093...03W
- Keywords:
-
- 1836 Hydrological cycles and budgets;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1855 Remote sensing;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1910 Data assimilation;
- integration and fusion;
- INFORMATICS