Rising Temperatures Increase Importance of Oceanic Evaporation as a Source for Continental Precipitation
Abstract
In many parts of the world, water resources for humans and ecosystems are heavily dependent on precipitation. Terrestrial precipitation is fed by moisture originating as evaporation from oceanic regions and from recycling of water evaporated from continental sources. Similarly, terrestrial evaporation contributes to rainfall over both oceanic and continental regions. We use two reanalysis datasets to demonstrate that the earth system model GFDL-ESM2G accurately captures continental precipitation and evaporation recycling processes. We then use model output to show that values of continental moisture recycling ratios are systematically higher in the past and lower in the future. We demonstrate consistency with theory showing that as atmospheric temperatures and evaporative demand increase in the future, evaporation increases over oceanic regions more rapidly than over land as a result of soil moisture limitations on land. A simple model describing this theory matches the zonal mean modeled results.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC54B..03F
- Keywords:
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- 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1655 Water cycles;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1836 Hydrological cycles and budgets;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL