Distribution and Trends in Reference Evapotranspiration in the North China Plain
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 4
Abstract
The distribution and trends in reference evapotranspiration are extremely important to water resources planning for agriculture, and it is widely believed that rates of will increase with global warming. This is a big concern in China, where water deficits are common in the North China Plain (NCP). In this study, Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration at 26 meteorological stations during 1961–2006 in and around the NCP was calculated. The temporal variations and spatial distribution of were analyzed and the causes for the variations were discussed. The results showed that: (1) the NCP was divided into two climatic regions based on aridity values: a semiarid region that accounts for 69% of the area and subhumid regions that made of the remaining area; (2) over the entire NCP, the highest annual occurred in the central and western areas and the lowest total was observed in the east. Comparing the mean monthly and annual distributions, the high values from May through July mainly determined the annual distribution; (3) for the whole NCP, annual showed a statistically significant decrease of 11.92 mm/decade over the 46 years of data collection in the NCP or approximately a 5% total decrease compared to the values in 1961; (4) to determine which variable has the greatest effect on the decrease in , decadal changes were observed for daily values of maximum air temperature , minimum air temperature , net radiation , and mean wind speed . These results indicate that the decreasing net radiation and wind speed had a bigger impact on rates than the increases observed by the maximum and minimum temperatures.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the “948” Project of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (Grant No. UNSPECIFIED2006-G52A-Q0). Thanks to the China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System for providing us with the meteorological data. We are grateful to Data-Sharing Network of Earth System Science for providing the digital map. The writers also thank Dr. David M. Sumner from USGS Florida and Dr. Minghua Zhang from University of California, Davis for their helpful comments. H. L. Zhang is the co-first author of the manuscript.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 4 • April 2010
Pages: 240 - 247
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 1, 2008
Accepted: Sep 9, 2009
Published online: Sep 11, 2009
Published in print: Apr 2010
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