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Regime shift of global oceanic evaporation in the late 1990s using OAFlux dataset

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Abstract

After the decadal change being marked by a distinct transition from a downward trend to an upward trend around 1977–1978, the global oceanic evaporation is found to present a regime shift to downward trend from 2000 onwards by using the Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) dataset. The robustness of post-2000 decreasing trend of global oceanic evaporation featured by OAFlux is fairly confirmed by checking the total precipitation trend from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) and the CPC Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP) datasets via budget constraint. Analysis on the 1999/2000 trend reversal in global mean temporal evolution and local linear trend patterns of evaporation and related variables is performed. Results show that the positive trend of evaporation before 2000 is primarily associated with both the SST warming and the strengthening of near-surface wind, while the negative trend of evaporation after 2000 may be highly correlated with the weakening of near-surface wind speed and reduction in sea-air humidity difference. The post-2000 decreasing of oceanic evaporation mainly effects precipitation trend over oceans via budget constraint, while land precipitation shows no significant decreasing trend, which may be explained by the increasing of evapotranspiration over land.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the helpful suggestions from the anonymous reviewers. Authors acknowledge the use of OAFlux products, GPCP and CMAP products. Information on the WHOI OAFlux project and related products can be found at http://oaflux.whoi.edu/. The GPCP and CMAP data is provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/.

Funding

This work was supported by the Basic planning project of Minisitry of Science and Technology (No.2016YFC1401403), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 41675066), and the program for scientific research start-up funds of Guangdong Ocean University (No. R17056).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Ocean and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, 524088, Guangdong, China

    Ning Cao

  2. School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, China

    Ning Cao & Baohua Ren

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  1. Ning Cao
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  2. Baohua Ren
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Correspondence to Baohua Ren.

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Cao, N., Ren, B. Regime shift of global oceanic evaporation in the late 1990s using OAFlux dataset. Theor Appl Climatol 136, 1407–1417 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-018-2566-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-018-2566-6

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