Abstract
Evapotranspiration (ET) is strongly influenced by gradual climate change and fluctuations in meteorological conditions, such as earlier snowmelt and occurrence of droughts. While numerous studies have investigated how climate change influences the inter-annual variability of ET, very few studies focused on quantifying how subseasonal events control the intra-variability of ET. In this study, we developed the concept of subseasonal regimes, whose timing and duration are determined statistically using Hidden Markov Models (HMM) based on meteorological conditions. We tested the value of subseasonal regimes for quantitatively characterizing the variability of seasonal and subseasonal events, including the onset of snow accumulation, snowmelt, growing season, monsoon, and defoliation. We examined how ET varied as a function of the timing of these events within a year and across six watersheds in the region. Variability of annual ET across these six sites is much less significant than the variability in hydroclimate attributes at the sites. Subseasonal ET, defined as the total ET during a given subseasonal regime, provides a measure of intra-annual variability of ET. Our study suggests that snowmelt and monsoon timing influence regime transitions and duration, such as earlier snowmelt can increase springtime ET rapidly but can trigger long-lasting fore-summer drought conditions that lead to decrease subseasonal ET. Overall, our approach provides an enhanced statistically based framework for quantifying how the timing of subseasonal-event transitions influence ET variability. The improved understanding of subseasonal ET variability is important for predicting the future impact of climate change on water resources from the Upper Colorado River Basin regions.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 739131 |
Journal | Frontiers in Water |
Volume | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 13 2022 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We acknowledge support from the Jane Lewis Fellowship of University of California, Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Watershed Function SFA under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Funders | Funder number |
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Watershed Function SFA | DE-AC02-05CH11231 |
U.S. Department of Energy | |
Office of Science | |
Biological and Environmental Research | |
University of California Berkeley |
Keywords
- Colorado River Basin
- climate change
- evapotranspiration
- intra-annual variability
- statistics