Terrestrial water loss at night: global relevance from observations and climate models

Padrón, Ryan S.; Gudmundsson, Lukas; Michel, Dominik; Seneviratne, Sonia I.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-793-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-793-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-793-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 2

Research article

|

21 Feb 2020

Research article |

| 21 Feb 2020

Terrestrial water loss at night: global relevance from observations and climate models

Ryan S. Padrón, Lukas Gudmundsson, Dominik Michel, and Sonia I. Seneviratne

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-793-2020-supplement

Data sets

Data for the article "Terrestrial Water Loss at Night: Global Relevance from Observations and Climate Models" R. S. Padrón, L. Gudmundsson, D. Michel, and S. I. Seneviratne https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000370968

FLUXNET2015 Dataset FLUXNET https://fluxnet.fluxdata.org/data/fluxnet2015-dataset/

CMIP5 Dataset CMIP https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/esgf-llnl/

Model code and software

Scripts for the article "Terrestrial Water Loss at Night: Global Relevance from Observations and Climate Models" R. S. Padrón, L. Gudmundsson, D. Michel, and S. I. Seneviratne https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000370968

Short summary

We focus on the net exchange of water between land and air via evapotranspiration and dew during the night. We provide, for the first time, an overview of the magnitude and variability of this flux across the globe from observations and climate models. Nocturnal water loss from land is 7 % of total evapotranspiration on average and can be greater than 15 % locally. Our results highlight the relevance of this often overlooked flux, with implications for water resources and climate studies.