4.7 Article

Urban Water Storage Capacity Inferred From Observed Evapotranspiration Recession

Journal

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 49, Issue 3, Pages -

Publisher

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021GL096069

Keywords

urban climate; recession analysis

Funding

  1. WIMEK PhD Grant 2020
  2. Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) [VIR16002]
  3. Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) [864.14.007]
  4. Bert Heusinkveld (WUR) (Amsterdam), Climate Proof Cities within the second phase of the Knowledge for Climate Program
  5. Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment
  6. strategic research program KBIV 'Sustainable spatial development of ecosystems, landscapes, seas and regions' - Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, Wageningen University and Research Centre [KB-14-002-005]
  7. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within Research Unit 1736 Urban Climate and Heat Stress in Mid Latitude Cities in View of Climate Change (UCaHS) [SCHE 750/8, SCHE 750/9]
  8. German Ministry of Research and Education [FKZ 01LP1602A]
  9. Acedamy of Finland (Helsinki) [321527]
  10. Municipality of Heraklion [105]
  11. National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC)
  12. Mexico City's Secretariat for the Environment through the Molina Center for Energy and the Environment (MCE2
  13. Mexico City)
  14. National Research Foundation of Korea Grant from the Korean Government (MSIT) (Seoul) [NRF-2018R1A5A1024958]
  15. National Research Foundation
  16. National University of Singapore (Singapore) [R-109-000-091-112]
  17. Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
  18. Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
  19. Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS
  20. Vancouver)
  21. Academy of Finland (AKA) [321527, 321527] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Water storage plays a crucial role in mitigating heat and flooding in urban areas. A novel approach to estimating effective water storage capacity from observed evaporation rates during precipitation-free periods is introduced. The study reveals that urban storage capacities are at least five times smaller than those of natural ecosystems, indicating extreme water limitation in urban evaporation regimes.
Water storage plays an important role in mitigating heat and flooding in urban areas. Assessment of the water storage capacity of cities remains challenging due to the inherent heterogeneity of the urban surface. Traditionally, effective storage has been estimated from runoff. Here, we present a novel approach to estimate effective water storage capacity from recession rates of observed evaporation during precipitation-free periods. We test this approach for cities at neighborhood scale with eddy-covariance based latent heat flux observations from 14 contrasting sites with different local climate zones, vegetation cover and characteristics, and climates. Based on analysis of 583 drydowns, we find storage capacities to vary between 1.3 and 28.4 mm, corresponding to e-folding timescales of 1.8-20.1 days. This makes the urban storage capacity at least five times smaller than all the observed values for natural ecosystems, reflecting an evaporation regime characterized by extreme water limitation.

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