SPATIO-TEMPORAL VARIATION OF ACTUAL EVAPOTRANSPIRATION AND ITS RELATION WITH CLIMATE PARAMETERS IN THE PEARL RIVER BASIN, CHINA

Abstract:

Spatio-temporal variation of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) in the Pearl River basin from 1961 to 2010 are analyzed based on daily data from 60 national observed stations. ETa is calculated by the Advection-Aridity model (AA model) in the current study, and Mann–CKendall test (MK) and Inverse Distance Weighted interpolation method (IDW) were applied to detect the trends and spatial variation pattern. The relations of ETa with climate parameters and radiation / dynamic terms are analyzed by Person correlation method. Our findings are shown as follows: 1) Mean annual ETa in the Pearl River basin is about 665.6 mm/a. It has significantly decreased in 1961–C2010 at a rate of -24.3 mm/10a. Seasonally, negative trends of summer and autumn ETa are higher than that of spring and winter. 2) The value of ETa is higher in the southeast coastal area than in the northwest region of the Pearl River basin, while the latter has shown the strongest negative trend. 3) Negative trends of ETa in the Pearl River basin are most probably due to decreasing radiation term and increasing dynamic term. The decrease of the radiation term is related with declining diurnal temperature range and sunshine duration, and rising atmospheric pressure as well. The contribution of dynamic term comes from increasing average temperature, maximum and minimum temperatures in the basin. Meanwhile, the decreasing average wind speed weakens dynamic term and finally, to a certain extent, it slows down the negative trend of the ETa.