HR: 17:45h
AN: H34D-08    [Abstracts]
TI: Can the worldwide changes in evaporative demand be reconciled with changes expected due to global warming?
AU: * Roderick, M L
EM: Michael.Roderick@anu.edu.au
AF: The Australian National University, Research School of Biological Sciences, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
AU: Farquhar, G D
EM: Graham.Farquhar@anu.edu.au
AF: The Australian National University, Research School of Biological Sciences, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
AB: Evaporation pans are devices, often used by agricultural scientists and engineers to schedule irrigation. They are also widely used by ecologists who recognise the ratio of ‘actual to potential' as being of fundamental significance. Because of the practical importance, many organisations, in many countries, maintain standardised networks of pan evaporimeters. Using those data, the scientific community now has a reasonably clear picture of worldwide changes in evaporative demand over the last 30 to 50 years. We are also starting to gain a picture of how the observed changes in pan evaporation are related to changes in radiation, humidity and wind, as well as with changes in actual evapotranspiration. In this paper we attempt to reconcile the observed trends in pan evaporation observations with (1) generic expectations for evaporative demand in a warmer world, (2) GCM model output and (3) oceanic observations of changing evaporation and rainfall.
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (0429, 3309)
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
DE: 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1631, 3322)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting