Geographic variation of surface energy partitioning in the climatic mean predicted from the maximum power limit

Convective and radiative cooling are the two principle mechanisms by which the Earth's surface transfers heat into the atmosphere and that shape surface temperature. However, this partitioning is not sufficiently constrained by energy and mass balances alone. We use a simple energy balance model in which convective fluxes and surface temperatures are determined with the additional thermodynamic limit of maximum convective power. We then show that the broad geographic variation of heat fluxes and surface temperatures in the climatological mean compare very well with the ERA-Interim reanalysis over land and ocean. We also show that the estimates depend considerably on the formulation of longwave radiative transfer and that a spatially uniform offset is related to the assumed cold temperature sink at which the heat engine operates.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Land use effects and climate impacts on evapotranspiration and catchment water balance

Evapotranspiration ET is a dominant Earth System process that couples the water and energy cycles at the earth surface. The pressure of global environmental changes foster the broad scientific aim to understand impacts of climate and land-use on evapotranspiration under transient conditions. In this work, the spatial scale of river catchments is addressed through data analysis of hydrological and meteorological archives with ET classically derived through water balance closure. Through a synthesis of various catchments with different climatic forcings and hydrological conditions, the core objectives of this thesis are: - Did environmental changes in the past, such as climatic- or land-use and land cover (LULC) changes, result in detectable non-stationary changes in the hydro-climate time series? - How can the impacts of climatic- from LULC changes on the hydroclimatology of catchments be separated? - What are the factors that control the sensitivity of ET and streamflow to external changes? These research questions are addressed for the climatic scales of long-term annual averages and seasonal conditions which characterise the hydroclimatology of river catchments. Illustrated by a rich hydro-climatic archive condensed for 27 small to medium sized river catchments in Saxony, a method is proposed to analyse the seasonal features of river flow allowing to detect shifting seasons in snow affected river basins in the last 90 years. Observations of snow depth at these same times lead to the conclusion, that changes in the annual cycle of air temperature have a large influence on the timing of the freeze-thaw in late winter and early spring. This causes large changes in storage of water in the snow pack, which leads to profound changes of the river regime, particularly affecting the river flow in the following months. A model-based data analysis, based on the fundamental principles of water and energy conservation for long-term average conditions, is proposed for the prediction of ET and streamflow, as well as the separation of climate related impacts from impacts resulting from changes in basin conditions. The framework was tested on a large data set of river catchments in the continental US and is shown to be consistent with other methods proposed in the literature. The observed past changes highlight that (i) changes in climate, such as precipitation or evaporative demand, result in changes of the partitioning within the water and energy balance, (ii) the aridity of the climate and to a lesser degree basin conditions determine the sensitivity to external changes, (iii) these controlling factors influence the direction of LULC change impacts, which in some cases can be larger than climate impacts. This work provides evidence, that changes in climatic and land cover conditions can lead to transient hydrological behaviours and make stationary assumptions invalid. Hence, past changes present the opportunity for model testing and thereby deriving fundamental laws and concepts at the scale of interest, which are not affected by changes in the boundary conditions.:Kurzfassung Abstract List of Manuscripts Symbols and abbreviations List of Symbols List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and relevance 1.1.1 Scientific importance of evapotranspiration 1.1.2 Pressure of human driven changes 1.1.3 Practical importance of evapotranspiration 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Focus on the catchment scale 1.2.2 Changes in the hydroclimatology of river catchments 1.2.3 Hydro-climate data analysis 1.3 Objectives and research questions 1.3.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 1.3.2 Long-term annual average changes of evapotranspiration and streamflow 1.3.3 Methodological requirements 1.4 Structure of the thesis 2 Long term variability of the annual hydrological regime 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Motivation 2.1.2 Seasonal changes in hydrologic records 2.1.3 Regional climate in Saxony 2.1.4 Objective and structure 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Annual periodic signal extraction 2.2.2 The runoff ratio and its annual phase 2.2.3 Descriptive circular statistics 2.2.4 Detection of nonstationarities, trends and change points 2.3 Data 2.4.1 Estimation and variability of the timing of the runoff ratio 2.4.2 Temporal variability of the timing 2.4.3 Does temperature explain trends in seasonality of runoff ratio? 2.4.4 Trend analysis in snow dominated basins 2.4.5 Uncertainty and significance of the results 2.5 Conclusions 2.A Preparation of basin input data 2.A.1 Precipitation 2.A.2 Temperature and snow depth data 3 Evaluation of water-energy balance frameworks 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory 3.2.1 Coupled water and energy balance 3.2.2 The ecohydrologic framework for change attribution 3.2.3 Applying the climate change hypothesis to predict changes in basin evapo transpiration and streamflow 3.2.4 Derivation of climatic sensitivity using the CCUW hypothesis 3.2.5 The Budyko hypothesis and derived sensitivities 3.3 Sensitivity analysis 3.3.1 Mapping of the Budyko functions into UW space 3.3.2 Mapping CCUW into Budyko space 3.3.3 Climatic sensitivity of basin evapotranspiration and streamflow 3.3.4 Climate-vegetation feedback effects 3.4 Application: three case studies 3.4.1 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) 3.4.2 Headwaters of the Yellow River Basin (HYRB) 3.4.3 Murray-Darling River Basin (MDB) 3.5 Conclusions 3.5.1 Potentials and limitations 3.5.2 Insights on the catchment parameter 3.5.3 Validation 3.5.4 Perspectives 3.A Derivation of the climate change direction 4 Climate sensitivity of streamflow over the continental United States 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Motivation 4.1.2 Hydro-climate of the continental US 4.1.3 Aims and research questions 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Ecohydrological concept to separate impacts of climate and basin changes 4.2.2 Streamflow change prediction based on a coupled water-energy balance framework 4.2.3 Streamflow change prediction based on the Budyko hypothesis 4.2.4 Statistical classification of potential climate and basin change impacts 4.3 Data 4.4 Results and discussion 4.4.1 Hydro-climate conditions in the US 4.4.2 Climate sensitivity of streamflow 4.4.3 Assessment of observed and predicted changes in streamflow 4.4.4 Uncertainty discussion 4.5 Conclusions 4.A Mathematical derivations for the Mezentsev function 5 Summary and conclusions 5.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 5.1.1 Major findings 5.1.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.1.3 Limitations and possible directions for further research 5.2 Long-term annual changes in ET and streamflow 5.2.1 Major findings 5.2.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.2.3 Limitations and further research 5.3 General conclusions and outlook 5.3.1 Regional and temporal limits and validity 5.3.2 Hydrological records carry signals of climate and land use change 5.3.3 Statistical significance of past changes 5.3.4 Improvements in assessing ET 5.3.5 Remote sensing 5.3.6 Learning from the past to predict the future? Bibliography Danksagung ErklärungDie Verdunstung ist ein maßgeblicher Prozess innerhalb des Klimasystems der Erde, welche den Wasserkreislauf mit dem Energiehaushalt der Erde verbindet. Eine zentrale wissenschaftliche Herausforderung ist, zu verstehen, wie die regionale Wasserverfügbarkeit durch Änderungen des Klimas oder der physiographischen Eigenschaften der Landoberfläche beeinflusst wird. Mittels einer integrierten Datenanalyse von vorhandenen langjährigen Archiven hydroklimatischer Zeitreihen werden die folgenden wissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen dieser Dissertation diskutiert: - Haben beobachtete Änderungen der Landoberfläche und des Klimas zu nachweisbaren, instationären hydroklimatischen Änderungen geführt? - Lassen sich die hydroklimatischen Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen und Änderungen der Landoberfläche voneinander unterscheiden? - Welche Faktoren beeinflussen die Sensitivität von Abfluss und Verdunstung auf Veränderungen der klimatischen und physiographischen Randbedingungen? Hierbei fokussiert sich die Arbeit auf Änderungen im langjährige Mittel und im Jahresgang von hydroklimatischen Variablen auf der räumlichen Skala von Flusseinzugsgebieten. Zur Untersuchung des hydrologischen Regimes wurde ein harmonischer Filter angewandt, der es erlaubt, die Eintrittszeit des Jahresgangs (Phase) zu quantifizieren. Diese klimatologische Kenngröße wurde für eine Vielzahl von Einzugsgebieten in Sachsen untersucht, wobei sich vor allem für die Gebiete in den Kammlagen des Erzgebirges signifikante Veränderungen ergaben. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die signifikante Phasenverschiebung der Temperatur seit Ende der 1980er Jahre zu einer verfrühten Schneeschmelze und dadurch zu einem Rückgang des Abflusses bis in die Sommermonate hinein geführt hat. Desweiteren wurde eine modellbasierte Datenanalyse entwickelt, welche auf Massen- und Energieerhalt von Einzugsgebieten im langjährigen Mittel beruht. Das entwickelte Konzept erlaubt es, Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen von anderen Effekten, welche z.B. durch Landnutzungsänderungen bedingt sind, abzugrenzen und zu quantifizieren. Die Ergebnisse einer Sensitivitätsanalyse dieses Konzeptes sowie die Anwendung auf einen umfangreichen hydroklimatischen Datensatz der USA zeigen: (i) Veränderungen im Wasser- oder Energiedargebot beeinflussen auch die Aufteilung der Wasser- und Energieflüsse. (ii) Die Aridität des Klimas und nachgeordnet die physiographischen Faktoren bestimmen die Sensitivität von Verdunstung und Abfluss. (iii) Beide Faktoren beeinflussen die Stärke und Richtung der Auswirkungen von physiographischen Änderungen. (iv) Anthropogene Veränderungen der Landoberfläche führten zum Teil zu stärkeren Auswirkungen als klimatisch bedingte Änderungen. Zusammenfassend zeigt sich, dass Änderungen von Landnutzung und Klima zu Verschiebungen im Wasserhaushalt führen können und damit auch die Annahme von Stationarität verletzen. Hydroklimatische Veränderungen bieten aber auch eine Gelegenheit zum Testen von Theorien und Modellen, um somit die grundlegenden Zusammenhänge zu erkennen, welche nicht durch Änderungen der Randbedingungen hinfällig werden.:Kurzfassung Abstract List of Manuscripts Symbols and abbreviations List of Symbols List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and relevance 1.1.1 Scientific importance of evapotranspiration 1.1.2 Pressure of human driven changes 1.1.3 Practical importance of evapotranspiration 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Focus on the catchment scale 1.2.2 Changes in the hydroclimatology of river catchments 1.2.3 Hydro-climate data analysis 1.3 Objectives and research questions 1.3.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 1.3.2 Long-term annual average changes of evapotranspiration and streamflow 1.3.3 Methodological requirements 1.4 Structure of the thesis 2 Long term variability of the annual hydrological regime 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Motivation 2.1.2 Seasonal changes in hydrologic records 2.1.3 Regional climate in Saxony 2.1.4 Objective and structure 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Annual periodic signal extraction 2.2.2 The runoff ratio and its annual phase 2.2.3 Descriptive circular statistics 2.2.4 Detection of nonstationarities, trends and change points 2.3 Data 2.4.1 Estimation and variability of the timing of the runoff ratio 2.4.2 Temporal variability of the timing 2.4.3 Does temperature explain trends in seasonality of runoff ratio? 2.4.4 Trend analysis in snow dominated basins 2.4.5 Uncertainty and significance of the results 2.5 Conclusions 2.A Preparation of basin input data 2.A.1 Precipitation 2.A.2 Temperature and snow depth data 3 Evaluation of water-energy balance frameworks 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory 3.2.1 Coupled water and energy balance 3.2.2 The ecohydrologic framework for change attribution 3.2.3 Applying the climate change hypothesis to predict changes in basin evapo transpiration and streamflow 3.2.4 Derivation of climatic sensitivity using the CCUW hypothesis 3.2.5 The Budyko hypothesis and derived sensitivities 3.3 Sensitivity analysis 3.3.1 Mapping of the Budyko functions into UW space 3.3.2 Mapping CCUW into Budyko space 3.3.3 Climatic sensitivity of basin evapotranspiration and streamflow 3.3.4 Climate-vegetation feedback effects 3.4 Application: three case studies 3.4.1 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) 3.4.2 Headwaters of the Yellow River Basin (HYRB) 3.4.3 Murray-Darling River Basin (MDB) 3.5 Conclusions 3.5.1 Potentials and limitations 3.5.2 Insights on the catchment parameter 3.5.3 Validation 3.5.4 Perspectives 3.A Derivation of the climate change direction 4 Climate sensitivity of streamflow over the continental United States 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Motivation 4.1.2 Hydro-climate of the continental US 4.1.3 Aims and research questions 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Ecohydrological concept to separate impacts of climate and basin changes 4.2.2 Streamflow change prediction based on a coupled water-energy balance framework 4.2.3 Streamflow change prediction based on the Budyko hypothesis 4.2.4 Statistical classification of potential climate and basin change impacts 4.3 Data 4.4 Results and discussion 4.4.1 Hydro-climate conditions in the US 4.4.2 Climate sensitivity of streamflow 4.4.3 Assessment of observed and predicted changes in streamflow 4.4.4 Uncertainty discussion 4.5 Conclusions 4.A Mathematical derivations for the Mezentsev function 5 Summary and conclusions 5.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 5.1.1 Major findings 5.1.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.1.3 Limitations and possible directions for further research 5.2 Long-term annual changes in ET and streamflow 5.2.1 Major findings 5.2.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.2.3 Limitations and further research 5.3 General conclusions and outlook 5.3.1 Regional and temporal limits and validity 5.3.2 Hydrological records carry signals of climate and land use change 5.3.3 Statistical significance of past changes 5.3.4 Improvements in assessing ET 5.3.5 Remote sensing 5.3.6 Learning from the past to predict the future? Bibliography Danksagung Erklärun

Effects of the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist liraglutide in juvenile transgenic pigs modeling a pre-diabetic condition

Background: The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP1R) agonist liraglutide improves glycemic control and reduces body weight of adult type 2 diabetic patients. However, efficacy and safety of liraglutide in adolescents has not been systematically investigated. Furthermore, possible pro-proliferative effects of GLP1R agonists on the endocrine and exocrine pancreas need to be further evaluated. We studied effects of liraglutide in adolescent pigs expressing a dominant-negative glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor (GIPRdn) in the beta-cells, leading to a pre-diabetic condition including disturbed glucose tolerance, reduced insulin secretion and progressive reduction of functional beta-cell mass. Methods: Two-month-old GIPRdn transgenic pigs were treated daily with liraglutide (0.6-1.2 mg per day) or placebo for 90 days. Glucose homeostasis was evaluated prior to and at the end of the treatment period by performing mixed meal and intravenous glucose tolerance tests (MMGTT and IVGTT). Finally animals were subjected to necropsy and quantitative-stereological analyses were performed for evaluation of alpha-and beta-cell mass, beta-cell proliferation as well as acinus-cell proliferation. Results: MMGTT at the end of the study revealed 23% smaller area under the curve (AUC) for glucose, a 36% smaller AUC insulin, and improved insulin sensitivity, while IVGTT showed a 15% smaller AUC glucose but unchanged AUC insulin in liraglutide-vs. placebo-treated animals. Liraglutide led to marked reductions in body weight gain (-31%) and food intake (-30%) compared to placebo treatment, associated with reduced phosphorylation of insulin receptor beta (INSRB)/insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor beta (IGF1RB) and protein kinase B (AKT) in skeletal muscle. Absolute alpha-and beta-cell mass was reduced in liraglutide-treated animals, but alpha-and beta-cell mass-to-body weight ratios were unchanged. Liraglutide neither stimulated beta-cell proliferation in the endocrine pancreas nor acinus-cell proliferation in the exocrine pancreas, excluding both beneficial and detrimental effects on the pig pancreas. Conclusions: Although plasma liraglutide levels of adolescent transgenic pigs treated in our study were higher compared to human trials, pro-proliferative effects on the endocrine or exocrine pancreas or other liraglutide-related side-effects were not observed

Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through on-line media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focussed on process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come

Land use effects and climate impacts on evapotranspiration and catchment water balance

Evapotranspiration ET is a dominant Earth System process that couples the water and energy cycles at the earth surface. The pressure of global environmental changes foster the broad scientific aim to understand impacts of climate and land-use on evapotranspiration under transient conditions. In this work, the spatial scale of river catchments is addressed through data analysis of hydrological and meteorological archives with ET classically derived through water balance closure. Through a synthesis of various catchments with different climatic forcings and hydrological conditions, the core objectives of this thesis are: - Did environmental changes in the past, such as climatic- or land-use and land cover (LULC) changes, result in detectable non-stationary changes in the hydro-climate time series? - How can the impacts of climatic- from LULC changes on the hydroclimatology of catchments be separated? - What are the factors that control the sensitivity of ET and streamflow to external changes? These research questions are addressed for the climatic scales of long-term annual averages and seasonal conditions which characterise the hydroclimatology of river catchments. Illustrated by a rich hydro-climatic archive condensed for 27 small to medium sized river catchments in Saxony, a method is proposed to analyse the seasonal features of river flow allowing to detect shifting seasons in snow affected river basins in the last 90 years. Observations of snow depth at these same times lead to the conclusion, that changes in the annual cycle of air temperature have a large influence on the timing of the freeze-thaw in late winter and early spring. This causes large changes in storage of water in the snow pack, which leads to profound changes of the river regime, particularly affecting the river flow in the following months. A model-based data analysis, based on the fundamental principles of water and energy conservation for long-term average conditions, is proposed for the prediction of ET and streamflow, as well as the separation of climate related impacts from impacts resulting from changes in basin conditions. The framework was tested on a large data set of river catchments in the continental US and is shown to be consistent with other methods proposed in the literature. The observed past changes highlight that (i) changes in climate, such as precipitation or evaporative demand, result in changes of the partitioning within the water and energy balance, (ii) the aridity of the climate and to a lesser degree basin conditions determine the sensitivity to external changes, (iii) these controlling factors influence the direction of LULC change impacts, which in some cases can be larger than climate impacts. This work provides evidence, that changes in climatic and land cover conditions can lead to transient hydrological behaviours and make stationary assumptions invalid. Hence, past changes present the opportunity for model testing and thereby deriving fundamental laws and concepts at the scale of interest, which are not affected by changes in the boundary conditions.:Kurzfassung Abstract List of Manuscripts Symbols and abbreviations List of Symbols List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and relevance 1.1.1 Scientific importance of evapotranspiration 1.1.2 Pressure of human driven changes 1.1.3 Practical importance of evapotranspiration 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Focus on the catchment scale 1.2.2 Changes in the hydroclimatology of river catchments 1.2.3 Hydro-climate data analysis 1.3 Objectives and research questions 1.3.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 1.3.2 Long-term annual average changes of evapotranspiration and streamflow 1.3.3 Methodological requirements 1.4 Structure of the thesis 2 Long term variability of the annual hydrological regime 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Motivation 2.1.2 Seasonal changes in hydrologic records 2.1.3 Regional climate in Saxony 2.1.4 Objective and structure 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Annual periodic signal extraction 2.2.2 The runoff ratio and its annual phase 2.2.3 Descriptive circular statistics 2.2.4 Detection of nonstationarities, trends and change points 2.3 Data 2.4.1 Estimation and variability of the timing of the runoff ratio 2.4.2 Temporal variability of the timing 2.4.3 Does temperature explain trends in seasonality of runoff ratio? 2.4.4 Trend analysis in snow dominated basins 2.4.5 Uncertainty and significance of the results 2.5 Conclusions 2.A Preparation of basin input data 2.A.1 Precipitation 2.A.2 Temperature and snow depth data 3 Evaluation of water-energy balance frameworks 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory 3.2.1 Coupled water and energy balance 3.2.2 The ecohydrologic framework for change attribution 3.2.3 Applying the climate change hypothesis to predict changes in basin evapo transpiration and streamflow 3.2.4 Derivation of climatic sensitivity using the CCUW hypothesis 3.2.5 The Budyko hypothesis and derived sensitivities 3.3 Sensitivity analysis 3.3.1 Mapping of the Budyko functions into UW space 3.3.2 Mapping CCUW into Budyko space 3.3.3 Climatic sensitivity of basin evapotranspiration and streamflow 3.3.4 Climate-vegetation feedback effects 3.4 Application: three case studies 3.4.1 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) 3.4.2 Headwaters of the Yellow River Basin (HYRB) 3.4.3 Murray-Darling River Basin (MDB) 3.5 Conclusions 3.5.1 Potentials and limitations 3.5.2 Insights on the catchment parameter 3.5.3 Validation 3.5.4 Perspectives 3.A Derivation of the climate change direction 4 Climate sensitivity of streamflow over the continental United States 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Motivation 4.1.2 Hydro-climate of the continental US 4.1.3 Aims and research questions 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Ecohydrological concept to separate impacts of climate and basin changes 4.2.2 Streamflow change prediction based on a coupled water-energy balance framework 4.2.3 Streamflow change prediction based on the Budyko hypothesis 4.2.4 Statistical classification of potential climate and basin change impacts 4.3 Data 4.4 Results and discussion 4.4.1 Hydro-climate conditions in the US 4.4.2 Climate sensitivity of streamflow 4.4.3 Assessment of observed and predicted changes in streamflow 4.4.4 Uncertainty discussion 4.5 Conclusions 4.A Mathematical derivations for the Mezentsev function 5 Summary and conclusions 5.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 5.1.1 Major findings 5.1.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.1.3 Limitations and possible directions for further research 5.2 Long-term annual changes in ET and streamflow 5.2.1 Major findings 5.2.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.2.3 Limitations and further research 5.3 General conclusions and outlook 5.3.1 Regional and temporal limits and validity 5.3.2 Hydrological records carry signals of climate and land use change 5.3.3 Statistical significance of past changes 5.3.4 Improvements in assessing ET 5.3.5 Remote sensing 5.3.6 Learning from the past to predict the future? Bibliography Danksagung ErklärungDie Verdunstung ist ein maßgeblicher Prozess innerhalb des Klimasystems der Erde, welche den Wasserkreislauf mit dem Energiehaushalt der Erde verbindet. Eine zentrale wissenschaftliche Herausforderung ist, zu verstehen, wie die regionale Wasserverfügbarkeit durch Änderungen des Klimas oder der physiographischen Eigenschaften der Landoberfläche beeinflusst wird. Mittels einer integrierten Datenanalyse von vorhandenen langjährigen Archiven hydroklimatischer Zeitreihen werden die folgenden wissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen dieser Dissertation diskutiert: - Haben beobachtete Änderungen der Landoberfläche und des Klimas zu nachweisbaren, instationären hydroklimatischen Änderungen geführt? - Lassen sich die hydroklimatischen Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen und Änderungen der Landoberfläche voneinander unterscheiden? - Welche Faktoren beeinflussen die Sensitivität von Abfluss und Verdunstung auf Veränderungen der klimatischen und physiographischen Randbedingungen? Hierbei fokussiert sich die Arbeit auf Änderungen im langjährige Mittel und im Jahresgang von hydroklimatischen Variablen auf der räumlichen Skala von Flusseinzugsgebieten. Zur Untersuchung des hydrologischen Regimes wurde ein harmonischer Filter angewandt, der es erlaubt, die Eintrittszeit des Jahresgangs (Phase) zu quantifizieren. Diese klimatologische Kenngröße wurde für eine Vielzahl von Einzugsgebieten in Sachsen untersucht, wobei sich vor allem für die Gebiete in den Kammlagen des Erzgebirges signifikante Veränderungen ergaben. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die signifikante Phasenverschiebung der Temperatur seit Ende der 1980er Jahre zu einer verfrühten Schneeschmelze und dadurch zu einem Rückgang des Abflusses bis in die Sommermonate hinein geführt hat. Desweiteren wurde eine modellbasierte Datenanalyse entwickelt, welche auf Massen- und Energieerhalt von Einzugsgebieten im langjährigen Mittel beruht. Das entwickelte Konzept erlaubt es, Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen von anderen Effekten, welche z.B. durch Landnutzungsänderungen bedingt sind, abzugrenzen und zu quantifizieren. Die Ergebnisse einer Sensitivitätsanalyse dieses Konzeptes sowie die Anwendung auf einen umfangreichen hydroklimatischen Datensatz der USA zeigen: (i) Veränderungen im Wasser- oder Energiedargebot beeinflussen auch die Aufteilung der Wasser- und Energieflüsse. (ii) Die Aridität des Klimas und nachgeordnet die physiographischen Faktoren bestimmen die Sensitivität von Verdunstung und Abfluss. (iii) Beide Faktoren beeinflussen die Stärke und Richtung der Auswirkungen von physiographischen Änderungen. (iv) Anthropogene Veränderungen der Landoberfläche führten zum Teil zu stärkeren Auswirkungen als klimatisch bedingte Änderungen. Zusammenfassend zeigt sich, dass Änderungen von Landnutzung und Klima zu Verschiebungen im Wasserhaushalt führen können und damit auch die Annahme von Stationarität verletzen. Hydroklimatische Veränderungen bieten aber auch eine Gelegenheit zum Testen von Theorien und Modellen, um somit die grundlegenden Zusammenhänge zu erkennen, welche nicht durch Änderungen der Randbedingungen hinfällig werden.:Kurzfassung Abstract List of Manuscripts Symbols and abbreviations List of Symbols List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and relevance 1.1.1 Scientific importance of evapotranspiration 1.1.2 Pressure of human driven changes 1.1.3 Practical importance of evapotranspiration 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Focus on the catchment scale 1.2.2 Changes in the hydroclimatology of river catchments 1.2.3 Hydro-climate data analysis 1.3 Objectives and research questions 1.3.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 1.3.2 Long-term annual average changes of evapotranspiration and streamflow 1.3.3 Methodological requirements 1.4 Structure of the thesis 2 Long term variability of the annual hydrological regime 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Motivation 2.1.2 Seasonal changes in hydrologic records 2.1.3 Regional climate in Saxony 2.1.4 Objective and structure 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Annual periodic signal extraction 2.2.2 The runoff ratio and its annual phase 2.2.3 Descriptive circular statistics 2.2.4 Detection of nonstationarities, trends and change points 2.3 Data 2.4.1 Estimation and variability of the timing of the runoff ratio 2.4.2 Temporal variability of the timing 2.4.3 Does temperature explain trends in seasonality of runoff ratio? 2.4.4 Trend analysis in snow dominated basins 2.4.5 Uncertainty and significance of the results 2.5 Conclusions 2.A Preparation of basin input data 2.A.1 Precipitation 2.A.2 Temperature and snow depth data 3 Evaluation of water-energy balance frameworks 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory 3.2.1 Coupled water and energy balance 3.2.2 The ecohydrologic framework for change attribution 3.2.3 Applying the climate change hypothesis to predict changes in basin evapo transpiration and streamflow 3.2.4 Derivation of climatic sensitivity using the CCUW hypothesis 3.2.5 The Budyko hypothesis and derived sensitivities 3.3 Sensitivity analysis 3.3.1 Mapping of the Budyko functions into UW space 3.3.2 Mapping CCUW into Budyko space 3.3.3 Climatic sensitivity of basin evapotranspiration and streamflow 3.3.4 Climate-vegetation feedback effects 3.4 Application: three case studies 3.4.1 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) 3.4.2 Headwaters of the Yellow River Basin (HYRB) 3.4.3 Murray-Darling River Basin (MDB) 3.5 Conclusions 3.5.1 Potentials and limitations 3.5.2 Insights on the catchment parameter 3.5.3 Validation 3.5.4 Perspectives 3.A Derivation of the climate change direction 4 Climate sensitivity of streamflow over the continental United States 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Motivation 4.1.2 Hydro-climate of the continental US 4.1.3 Aims and research questions 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Ecohydrological concept to separate impacts of climate and basin changes 4.2.2 Streamflow change prediction based on a coupled water-energy balance framework 4.2.3 Streamflow change prediction based on the Budyko hypothesis 4.2.4 Statistical classification of potential climate and basin change impacts 4.3 Data 4.4 Results and discussion 4.4.1 Hydro-climate conditions in the US 4.4.2 Climate sensitivity of streamflow 4.4.3 Assessment of observed and predicted changes in streamflow 4.4.4 Uncertainty discussion 4.5 Conclusions 4.A Mathematical derivations for the Mezentsev function 5 Summary and conclusions 5.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 5.1.1 Major findings 5.1.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.1.3 Limitations and possible directions for further research 5.2 Long-term annual changes in ET and streamflow 5.2.1 Major findings 5.2.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.2.3 Limitations and further research 5.3 General conclusions and outlook 5.3.1 Regional and temporal limits and validity 5.3.2 Hydrological records carry signals of climate and land use change 5.3.3 Statistical significance of past changes 5.3.4 Improvements in assessing ET 5.3.5 Remote sensing 5.3.6 Learning from the past to predict the future? Bibliography Danksagung Erklärun

Land use effects and climate impacts on evapotranspiration and catchment water balance

Evapotranspiration ET is a dominant Earth System process that couples the water and energy cycles at the earth surface. The pressure of global environmental changes foster the broad scientific aim to understand impacts of climate and land-use on evapotranspiration under transient conditions. In this work, the spatial scale of river catchments is addressed through data analysis of hydrological and meteorological archives with ET classically derived through water balance closure. Through a synthesis of various catchments with different climatic forcings and hydrological conditions, the core objectives of this thesis are: - Did environmental changes in the past, such as climatic- or land-use and land cover (LULC) changes, result in detectable non-stationary changes in the hydro-climate time series? - How can the impacts of climatic- from LULC changes on the hydroclimatology of catchments be separated? - What are the factors that control the sensitivity of ET and streamflow to external changes? These research questions are addressed for the climatic scales of long-term annual averages and seasonal conditions which characterise the hydroclimatology of river catchments. Illustrated by a rich hydro-climatic archive condensed for 27 small to medium sized river catchments in Saxony, a method is proposed to analyse the seasonal features of river flow allowing to detect shifting seasons in snow affected river basins in the last 90 years. Observations of snow depth at these same times lead to the conclusion, that changes in the annual cycle of air temperature have a large influence on the timing of the freeze-thaw in late winter and early spring. This causes large changes in storage of water in the snow pack, which leads to profound changes of the river regime, particularly affecting the river flow in the following months. A model-based data analysis, based on the fundamental principles of water and energy conservation for long-term average conditions, is proposed for the prediction of ET and streamflow, as well as the separation of climate related impacts from impacts resulting from changes in basin conditions. The framework was tested on a large data set of river catchments in the continental US and is shown to be consistent with other methods proposed in the literature. The observed past changes highlight that (i) changes in climate, such as precipitation or evaporative demand, result in changes of the partitioning within the water and energy balance, (ii) the aridity of the climate and to a lesser degree basin conditions determine the sensitivity to external changes, (iii) these controlling factors influence the direction of LULC change impacts, which in some cases can be larger than climate impacts. This work provides evidence, that changes in climatic and land cover conditions can lead to transient hydrological behaviours and make stationary assumptions invalid. Hence, past changes present the opportunity for model testing and thereby deriving fundamental laws and concepts at the scale of interest, which are not affected by changes in the boundary conditions.:Kurzfassung Abstract List of Manuscripts Symbols and abbreviations List of Symbols List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and relevance 1.1.1 Scientific importance of evapotranspiration 1.1.2 Pressure of human driven changes 1.1.3 Practical importance of evapotranspiration 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Focus on the catchment scale 1.2.2 Changes in the hydroclimatology of river catchments 1.2.3 Hydro-climate data analysis 1.3 Objectives and research questions 1.3.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 1.3.2 Long-term annual average changes of evapotranspiration and streamflow 1.3.3 Methodological requirements 1.4 Structure of the thesis 2 Long term variability of the annual hydrological regime 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Motivation 2.1.2 Seasonal changes in hydrologic records 2.1.3 Regional climate in Saxony 2.1.4 Objective and structure 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Annual periodic signal extraction 2.2.2 The runoff ratio and its annual phase 2.2.3 Descriptive circular statistics 2.2.4 Detection of nonstationarities, trends and change points 2.3 Data 2.4.1 Estimation and variability of the timing of the runoff ratio 2.4.2 Temporal variability of the timing 2.4.3 Does temperature explain trends in seasonality of runoff ratio? 2.4.4 Trend analysis in snow dominated basins 2.4.5 Uncertainty and significance of the results 2.5 Conclusions 2.A Preparation of basin input data 2.A.1 Precipitation 2.A.2 Temperature and snow depth data 3 Evaluation of water-energy balance frameworks 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory 3.2.1 Coupled water and energy balance 3.2.2 The ecohydrologic framework for change attribution 3.2.3 Applying the climate change hypothesis to predict changes in basin evapo transpiration and streamflow 3.2.4 Derivation of climatic sensitivity using the CCUW hypothesis 3.2.5 The Budyko hypothesis and derived sensitivities 3.3 Sensitivity analysis 3.3.1 Mapping of the Budyko functions into UW space 3.3.2 Mapping CCUW into Budyko space 3.3.3 Climatic sensitivity of basin evapotranspiration and streamflow 3.3.4 Climate-vegetation feedback effects 3.4 Application: three case studies 3.4.1 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) 3.4.2 Headwaters of the Yellow River Basin (HYRB) 3.4.3 Murray-Darling River Basin (MDB) 3.5 Conclusions 3.5.1 Potentials and limitations 3.5.2 Insights on the catchment parameter 3.5.3 Validation 3.5.4 Perspectives 3.A Derivation of the climate change direction 4 Climate sensitivity of streamflow over the continental United States 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Motivation 4.1.2 Hydro-climate of the continental US 4.1.3 Aims and research questions 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Ecohydrological concept to separate impacts of climate and basin changes 4.2.2 Streamflow change prediction based on a coupled water-energy balance framework 4.2.3 Streamflow change prediction based on the Budyko hypothesis 4.2.4 Statistical classification of potential climate and basin change impacts 4.3 Data 4.4 Results and discussion 4.4.1 Hydro-climate conditions in the US 4.4.2 Climate sensitivity of streamflow 4.4.3 Assessment of observed and predicted changes in streamflow 4.4.4 Uncertainty discussion 4.5 Conclusions 4.A Mathematical derivations for the Mezentsev function 5 Summary and conclusions 5.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 5.1.1 Major findings 5.1.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.1.3 Limitations and possible directions for further research 5.2 Long-term annual changes in ET and streamflow 5.2.1 Major findings 5.2.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.2.3 Limitations and further research 5.3 General conclusions and outlook 5.3.1 Regional and temporal limits and validity 5.3.2 Hydrological records carry signals of climate and land use change 5.3.3 Statistical significance of past changes 5.3.4 Improvements in assessing ET 5.3.5 Remote sensing 5.3.6 Learning from the past to predict the future? Bibliography Danksagung ErklärungDie Verdunstung ist ein maßgeblicher Prozess innerhalb des Klimasystems der Erde, welche den Wasserkreislauf mit dem Energiehaushalt der Erde verbindet. Eine zentrale wissenschaftliche Herausforderung ist, zu verstehen, wie die regionale Wasserverfügbarkeit durch Änderungen des Klimas oder der physiographischen Eigenschaften der Landoberfläche beeinflusst wird. Mittels einer integrierten Datenanalyse von vorhandenen langjährigen Archiven hydroklimatischer Zeitreihen werden die folgenden wissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen dieser Dissertation diskutiert: - Haben beobachtete Änderungen der Landoberfläche und des Klimas zu nachweisbaren, instationären hydroklimatischen Änderungen geführt? - Lassen sich die hydroklimatischen Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen und Änderungen der Landoberfläche voneinander unterscheiden? - Welche Faktoren beeinflussen die Sensitivität von Abfluss und Verdunstung auf Veränderungen der klimatischen und physiographischen Randbedingungen? Hierbei fokussiert sich die Arbeit auf Änderungen im langjährige Mittel und im Jahresgang von hydroklimatischen Variablen auf der räumlichen Skala von Flusseinzugsgebieten. Zur Untersuchung des hydrologischen Regimes wurde ein harmonischer Filter angewandt, der es erlaubt, die Eintrittszeit des Jahresgangs (Phase) zu quantifizieren. Diese klimatologische Kenngröße wurde für eine Vielzahl von Einzugsgebieten in Sachsen untersucht, wobei sich vor allem für die Gebiete in den Kammlagen des Erzgebirges signifikante Veränderungen ergaben. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die signifikante Phasenverschiebung der Temperatur seit Ende der 1980er Jahre zu einer verfrühten Schneeschmelze und dadurch zu einem Rückgang des Abflusses bis in die Sommermonate hinein geführt hat. Desweiteren wurde eine modellbasierte Datenanalyse entwickelt, welche auf Massen- und Energieerhalt von Einzugsgebieten im langjährigen Mittel beruht. Das entwickelte Konzept erlaubt es, Auswirkungen von Klimaänderungen von anderen Effekten, welche z.B. durch Landnutzungsänderungen bedingt sind, abzugrenzen und zu quantifizieren. Die Ergebnisse einer Sensitivitätsanalyse dieses Konzeptes sowie die Anwendung auf einen umfangreichen hydroklimatischen Datensatz der USA zeigen: (i) Veränderungen im Wasser- oder Energiedargebot beeinflussen auch die Aufteilung der Wasser- und Energieflüsse. (ii) Die Aridität des Klimas und nachgeordnet die physiographischen Faktoren bestimmen die Sensitivität von Verdunstung und Abfluss. (iii) Beide Faktoren beeinflussen die Stärke und Richtung der Auswirkungen von physiographischen Änderungen. (iv) Anthropogene Veränderungen der Landoberfläche führten zum Teil zu stärkeren Auswirkungen als klimatisch bedingte Änderungen. Zusammenfassend zeigt sich, dass Änderungen von Landnutzung und Klima zu Verschiebungen im Wasserhaushalt führen können und damit auch die Annahme von Stationarität verletzen. Hydroklimatische Veränderungen bieten aber auch eine Gelegenheit zum Testen von Theorien und Modellen, um somit die grundlegenden Zusammenhänge zu erkennen, welche nicht durch Änderungen der Randbedingungen hinfällig werden.:Kurzfassung Abstract List of Manuscripts Symbols and abbreviations List of Symbols List of abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and relevance 1.1.1 Scientific importance of evapotranspiration 1.1.2 Pressure of human driven changes 1.1.3 Practical importance of evapotranspiration 1.2 Scope 1.2.1 Focus on the catchment scale 1.2.2 Changes in the hydroclimatology of river catchments 1.2.3 Hydro-climate data analysis 1.3 Objectives and research questions 1.3.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 1.3.2 Long-term annual average changes of evapotranspiration and streamflow 1.3.3 Methodological requirements 1.4 Structure of the thesis 2 Long term variability of the annual hydrological regime 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Motivation 2.1.2 Seasonal changes in hydrologic records 2.1.3 Regional climate in Saxony 2.1.4 Objective and structure 2.2 Methods 2.2.1 Annual periodic signal extraction 2.2.2 The runoff ratio and its annual phase 2.2.3 Descriptive circular statistics 2.2.4 Detection of nonstationarities, trends and change points 2.3 Data 2.4.1 Estimation and variability of the timing of the runoff ratio 2.4.2 Temporal variability of the timing 2.4.3 Does temperature explain trends in seasonality of runoff ratio? 2.4.4 Trend analysis in snow dominated basins 2.4.5 Uncertainty and significance of the results 2.5 Conclusions 2.A Preparation of basin input data 2.A.1 Precipitation 2.A.2 Temperature and snow depth data 3 Evaluation of water-energy balance frameworks 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory 3.2.1 Coupled water and energy balance 3.2.2 The ecohydrologic framework for change attribution 3.2.3 Applying the climate change hypothesis to predict changes in basin evapo transpiration and streamflow 3.2.4 Derivation of climatic sensitivity using the CCUW hypothesis 3.2.5 The Budyko hypothesis and derived sensitivities 3.3 Sensitivity analysis 3.3.1 Mapping of the Budyko functions into UW space 3.3.2 Mapping CCUW into Budyko space 3.3.3 Climatic sensitivity of basin evapotranspiration and streamflow 3.3.4 Climate-vegetation feedback effects 3.4 Application: three case studies 3.4.1 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) 3.4.2 Headwaters of the Yellow River Basin (HYRB) 3.4.3 Murray-Darling River Basin (MDB) 3.5 Conclusions 3.5.1 Potentials and limitations 3.5.2 Insights on the catchment parameter 3.5.3 Validation 3.5.4 Perspectives 3.A Derivation of the climate change direction 4 Climate sensitivity of streamflow over the continental United States 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Motivation 4.1.2 Hydro-climate of the continental US 4.1.3 Aims and research questions 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Ecohydrological concept to separate impacts of climate and basin changes 4.2.2 Streamflow change prediction based on a coupled water-energy balance framework 4.2.3 Streamflow change prediction based on the Budyko hypothesis 4.2.4 Statistical classification of potential climate and basin change impacts 4.3 Data 4.4 Results and discussion 4.4.1 Hydro-climate conditions in the US 4.4.2 Climate sensitivity of streamflow 4.4.3 Assessment of observed and predicted changes in streamflow 4.4.4 Uncertainty discussion 4.5 Conclusions 4.A Mathematical derivations for the Mezentsev function 5 Summary and conclusions 5.1 Shifting seasons in hydrology 5.1.1 Major findings 5.1.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.1.3 Limitations and possible directions for further research 5.2 Long-term annual changes in ET and streamflow 5.2.1 Major findings 5.2.2 Socio-economic and political relevance 5.2.3 Limitations and further research 5.3 General conclusions and outlook 5.3.1 Regional and temporal limits and validity 5.3.2 Hydrological records carry signals of climate and land use change 5.3.3 Statistical significance of past changes 5.3.4 Improvements in assessing ET 5.3.5 Remote sensing 5.3.6 Learning from the past to predict the future? 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Stronger Global Warming on Nonrainy Days in Observations From China

Nonrainy days have rather different hydrologic and radiative conditions than rainy days, but few investigations considered how these different conditions contribute to the observed global warming. Here, we show that global warming is considerably stronger on nonrainy days using observations from China. We find that trends in mean temperature on nonrainy days are about 0.1 ° C/10 yr higher than on rainy days, and that about 80% of the total temperature increase is contributed by nonrainy days. The main reason is likely to be a stronger sensitivity of downwelling longwave radiation to greenhouse forcing on nonrainy days due to fewer clouds and water vapor compared with rainy days, which is not a hydrological effect but mainly a radiative effect. Our findings are consistent with the stronger mean temperature trends in drier regions and imply that the different temperature sensitivities on nonrainy and rainy days may have profound effects on natural and social systems

Dominant controls of transpiration along a hillslope transect inferred from ecohydrological measurements and thermodynamic limits

We combine ecohydrological observations of sap flow and soil moisture with thermodynamically constrained estimates of atmospheric evaporative demand to infer the dominant controls of forest transpiration in complex terrain. We hypothesize that daily variations in transpiration are dominated by variations in atmospheric demand, while site-specific controls, including limiting soil moisture, act on longer timescales. We test these hypotheses with data of a measurement setup consisting of five sites along a valley cross section in Luxembourg. Both hillslopes are covered by forest dominated by European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.). Two independent measurements are used to estimate stand transpiration: (i) sap flow and (ii) diurnal variations in soil moisture, which were used to estimate the daily root water uptake. Atmospheric evaporative demand is estimated through thermodynamically constrained evaporation, which only requires absorbed solar radiation and temperature as input data without any empirical parameters. Both transpiration estimates are strongly correlated to atmospheric demand at the daily timescale. We find that neither vapor pressure deficit nor wind speed add to the explained variance, supporting the idea that they are dependent variables on land–atmosphere exchange and the surface energy budget. Estimated stand transpiration was in a similar range at the north-facing and the south-facing hillslopes despite the different aspect and the largely different stand composition. We identified an inverse relationship between sap flux density and the site-average sapwood area per tree as estimated by the site forest inventories. This suggests that tree hydraulic adaptation can compensate for heterogeneous conditions. However, during dry summer periods differences in topographic factors and stand structure can cause spatially variable transpiration rates. We conclude that absorption of solar radiation at the surface forms a dominant control for turbulent heat and mass exchange and that vegetation across the hillslope adjusts to this constraint at the tree and stand level. These findings should help to improve the description of land-surface–atmosphere exchange at regional scales.ISSN:1027-5606ISSN:1607-793