On the basis of eight atmospheric reanalyses, we analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of global evaporation and also briefly evaluated the eight reanalyses. The results indicate that the long-term mean annual evaporation obtained from different reanalyses are consistent over most regions, with significant maritime-continental contrasts, as well as differences in meridional directions, and the land evaporation generally decreases with the increase of altitude. In addition, the temporal evolution of global evaporation varies significantly among the datasets, MERRA, ERA-Interim, NCEP-NCRA, and NCEP-DOE are very similar, whereas CFSR agrees best with ERA-40. Comparison of the inter-annual to inter-decadal variability of land evaporation reveals large differences among the reanalyses, whereas MERRA, CFSR, and NCEP-DOE are exactly similar. The temporal variation of evaporation over the oceans showed a relatively high consistency, which indicates that the quality of the reconstructed evaporation values over the oceans is higher, and even greater uncertainties lie in the estimates of evaporation over the land. In general, MERRA and NCEP-DOE may appropriately reflect the spatial-temporal characteristics of global evaporation, showing strong representativeness. The CFSR and ERA-40 are capable of revealing the characteristics of land evaporation, whereas ERA-Interim, NCEP-NCAR, OAFlux, and HOAPS are relatively applicable for research focused on the evaporation over the oceans. According to ERA-40, NCEP-NCAR, and OAFlux, global evaporation significantly decreased for the period of 1958–1978. In contrast, most of the eight reanalyses show a significant linear increase for the period of 1979–2011, and evaporation over the oceans was even more pronounced. Furthermore, the results are presented for the mean annual cycle of global evaporation, the changes at the low latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere are most distinct, and the monthly variation amplitude of the land evaporation was higher than that of the evaporati
By using the multi-fractal detrended fluctuation analysis method, we analyze the nonlinear property of drought in southwestern China. The results indicate that the occurrence of drought in southwestern China is multi-fractal and long- range correlated, and these properties are indifferent to timescales. A power-law decay distribution well describes the return interval of drought events and the auto-correlation. Furthermore, a drought risk exponent based on the multi-fractal property and the long-range correlation is presented. This risk exponent can give useful information about whether the drought may or may not occur in future, and provide a guidance function for preventing disasters and reducing damage.
In this paper, we study the spatiotemporal characteristics of precipitable water, precipitation, evaporation, and watervapor flux divergence in different seasons over northeast China and the water balance of that area. The data used in this paper is provided by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The results show that the spatial distributions of precipitable water, precipitation, and evaporation feature that the values of elements above in the southeastern area are larger than those in the northwestern area; in summer, much precipitation and evaporation occur in the Changbai Mountain region as a strong moisture convergence region; in spring and autumn, moisture divergence dominates the northeast of China; in winter, the moisture divergence and convergence are weak in this area. From 1979 to 2010, the total precipitation of summer and autumn in northeast China decreased significantly; especially from 1999 to 2010, the summer precipitation always demonstrated negative anomaly. Additionally, other elements in different seasons changed in a truly imperceptible way. In spring, the evaporation exceeded the precipitation in northeast China; in summer, the precipitation was more prominent; in autumn and winter, precipitation played a more dominating role than the evaporation in the northern part of northeast China, while the evaporation exceeded the precipitation in the southern part. The Interim ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) data have properly described the water balance of different seasons in northeast China. Based on ERA-Interim data, the moisture sinks computed through moisture convergence and moisture local variation are quite consistent with those computed through precipitation and evaporation, which proves that ERA- Interim data can be used in the research of water balance in northeast China. On a seasonal scale, the moisture convergence has a greater influence than the local moisture variation on a moisture sink, and the latter is variable slightly, generally as a constant
In the present paper, a comparison of the performance between moving cutting data-rescaled range analysis (MC- R/S) and moving cutting data-rescaled variance analysis (MC-V/S) is made. The results clearly indicate that the operating efficiency of the MC-R/S algorithm is higher than that of the MC-V/S algorithm. In our numerical test, the computer time consumed by MC-V/S is approximately 25 times that by MC-R/S for an identical window size in artificial data. Except for the difference in operating efficiency, there are no significant differences in performance between MC-R/S and MC-V/S for the abrupt dynamic change detection. Mc-R/s and MC-V/S both display some degree of anti-noise ability. However, it is important to consider the influences of strong noise on the detection results of MC-R/S and MC-V/S in practical application