Characteristics and Causes of Changes of Pan Evaporation in China During 1957-2001

Evaporation is an important component of surface heat and water balance, and is affected directly by land use and climate change. This paper studies the changes of evaporation in China associated with the global climate change, and explores characteristics of the corresponding regional water cycle variations. The 20-cm-caliber pan evaporation measurements collected from 427 meteorological stations in China from 1957 to 2001 are analyzed to disclose the small-pan evaporation variation trend in China and the associated causes. The results show that although the annual average temperature over China exhibits an upward tendency of 0.2°C/10 yr for the past 45 years,the pan evaporation on the whole has decreased by －34.12mm/10 yr. Nonetheless, a significant increase of pan evaporation is observed in a few areas such as the northern part of the Greater Hingan Mountains in Northeast China and the Beishan Mountains in Inner Mongolia. The largest decrease of pan evaporation lies in East China, northern parts of Northwest China,South China, and southern Tibet. An analysis of energy balance and aerodynamics using Penman's formula proves that the drop of pan evaporation in East China is mainly due to a significant decline of source energy for evaporation, while that in West China is mostly attributed to an aerodynamic reduction. The analysis on tendencies of various meteorological and other related factors shows that wind speed and sunshine hours are two most important factors causing the pan evaporation reduction in China.