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Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes.

ABSTRACT: The evaporative loss from global lakes (natural and artificial) is a critical component of the terrestrial water and energy balance. However, the evaporation volume of these water bodies-from the spatial distribution to the long-term trend-is as of yet unknown. Here, using satellite observations and modeling tools, we quantified the evaporation volume from 1.42 million global lakes from 1985 to 2018. We find that the long-term average lake evaporation is 1500 ± 150 km³ year^-1 and it has increased at a rate of 3.12 km³ year^-1. The trend attributions include an increasing evaporation rate (58%), decreasing lake ice coverage (23%), and increasing lake surface area (19%). While only accounting for 5% of the global lake storage capacity, artificial lakes (i.e., reservoirs) contribute 16% to the evaporation volume. Our results underline the importance of using evaporation volume, rather than evaporation rate, as the primary index for assessing climatic impacts on lake systems.

SUBMITTER: Zhao G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9240014 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes.

Zhao Gang G Li Yao Y Zhou Liming L Gao Huilin H

Nature communications 20220628 1

The evaporative loss from global lakes (natural and artificial) is a critical component of the terrestrial water and energy balance. However, the evaporation volume of these water bodies-from the spatial distribution to the long-term trend-is as of yet unknown. Here, using satellite observations and modeling tools, we quantified the evaporation volume from 1.42 million global lakes from 1985 to 2018. We find that the long-term average lake evaporation is 1500 ± 150 km<sup>3</sup> year<sup>-1</su ...[more]

PMID: 35764629

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Project description:Valery M. Gavrilov (2017) Total evaporative water loss (TEWL) in Passeriformes and Non-Passeriformes was estimated by simultaneous measurements of energy expenditure and mass loss in resting birds. It was found that the percentage of heat dissipated by water evaporation depends on body size. Published data for 102 bird species were analyzed together with my own measurements for 157 bird species at thermally neutral temperatures (mostly 25°C) to establish the following relationship between TEWL and body mass: TEWL25°C Aves = 0.28 m0.701, R 2 = 0.92, where TEWL is in g H2O/day and m is body mass (g). The scaling exponent 0.701 ± 0.007 is 0.05 greater than for the relationship of basal metabolic rate (BMR) to body mass. It was found that TEWL in passerines is higher than in non-passerines at all ambient temperatures by 50% at 25°C, 30% at 0°C, 39% at the lower critical temperature, and 59% at the upper critical temperature. The dependence of water loss on body mass at different ambient temperatures (T A) was found to vary in the same manner as evaporative heat loss. TEWL in Passeriformes is approximately 25-60% higher than in Non-Passeriformes (particularly at high T A), which is consistent with the ratio of their BMR levels. Within the thermoneutral zone, the proportion of heat dissipated by evaporation increases by approximately 2.6-fold in small passerines and by almost 4.1-fold in large passerines with the transition from the lower to upper critical temperature. In non-passerines, the proportion of evaporative heat losses increases by approximately 2.7 times within the thermoneutral zone in both large and small birds. The high basal metabolic rate in Passeriformes involves benefits like a higher maximum metabolic power and the ability to breed at lower ambient temperatures, but it comes with a cost: a significant expenditure of evaporative water. This cost is important because it is found to increase with body size in Passeriformes due to the forced evaporative heat loss, but it shows virtually no increase with body size in Non-Passeriformes. Thus, despite a high BMR significantly increasing ecological opportunities, this way of expanding the ecological niches is possible for the small size class only. These findings suggest that the high level of basal metabolic rate in Passeriformes in comparison to Non-Passeriformes determines the necessity for the former to utilize considerably larger amounts of water for evaporation to maintain the needed heat balance, especially at higher ambient temperatures and at larger body sizes.

Dataset Information

Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes.

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Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes.

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