Diverse trends in observed pan evaporation in South Africa suggest multiple interacting drivers

Abstract

Planning for future water resource management in a warming climate is confounded when an expectation of increasing evaporation from open water surfaces with global warming is contradicted by observations of secular declines of pan evaporation. Decreasing pan evaporation has been observed globally – a trend which has been attributed variously to declines in wind run (‘global stilling’), declines in radiation (‘global dimming’) and increases in ambient humidity. This contrast between expectation and observation is known as the ‘evaporation paradox’. We evaluated trends in Symons pan evaporation from 154 pans across South Africa. Whilst 59 pans (38% of the 154) showed a statistically significant decrease in observed evaporation rates (p≤0.05), 30 (20%) showed an increase, and 65 (42%) showed no change. These results do not support simple attributions of trends to a common global cause. There is no spatially coherent pattern to trends across South Africa, suggesting that shifts in local drivers of evaporation confound expectations of secular trends due to global drivers. Changes in fetch conditions of the Symons pan installations may be implicated, whereby increasing tree density (through afforestation, alien plant invasion and woody thickening) increases surface friction, reducing wind run, and/or irrigation nearby, increasing local humidity. Correct attribution of the evaporation paradox to reduced wind run in South Africa must consider changing local conditions. Increased tree cover has been observed near a third of the South African Symons pans. Observed evaporation increases for one fifth of pans may implicate expected global drivers for pans where local fetch conditions have remained relatively constant.

Comparing the cost-efficiencies of different methods of evaporation suppression for agricultural reservoirs

“…This study does not go into substantial detail on all of the sources of variation that could contribute to capital and operational and maintenance costs but is more indicative and illustrative of methods. Evaporation rates are varied in three scenarios, using as a median value the evaporation rate calculated over one year with the Penman-Monteith method, on the basis that different climatic factors, particularly rainfall, causes annual differences in evaporation (Chapman et al, 2021). Combinations of different evaporation and discount rates provide a sensitivity test of the movement of the URV to varying inputs to the key variables.…”

Cap. 4. El agua. En: La Quinta Evaluación Nacional del Clima

“…UU. La evaporación en bandeja es un concepto útil para estimar la demanda de evaporación atmosférica, pero se ve muy afectada por las condiciones ambientales locales, que pueden ocasionar tendencias contradictorias en la evaporación en bandeja en una región más amplia 198 , como se observa en EE. UU.…”