Climatic and terrestrial storage control on evapotranspiration temporal variability: Analysis of river basins around the world

Knowledge of the temporal variability of evapotranspiration (ET) is fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of hydroclimatologic processes under a changing climate and anthropogenic interferences. This study applies a variance decomposition framework to assessing ET interannual and intra-annual variance in 32 large river basins. It is found that climate (precipitation and potential ET) and terrestrial storage play different roles in ET variance with different time scales. At the interannual scale, ET variance is primarily controlled by climatic variability and dampened/enhanced by terrestrial storage change. At the intra-annual scale, the sources of ET variance exhibit a geographic pattern: ET variance is controlled by terrestrial storage change in Middle Asia, by seasonality in the Indian monsoon region, by precipitation and terrestrial storage in low altitude arid regions, and by potential ET and terrestrial storage in boreal regions. Quantifying the components of ET variability will help scientists understand the factors on ET processes under various natural and anthropogenic conditions.