J. Clim. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0145.1 (2019).
Land precipitation is vital to populations and ecosystems worldwide. Globally, terrestrial precipitation has two main sources: evaporation off the ocean surface or via ‘recycled’ moisture from evaporation (and transpiration) over land.
Kirsten Findell, from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, USA, and colleagues in the US and the Netherlands use climate models, reanalysis datasets and a moisture tracking algorithm to estimate historical patterns and future changes to moisture recycling. Historically, they find that around 55% of terrestrial evaporation is recycled and precipitates back on land, while about 40% of land precipitation originates as land evaporation.
The researchers estimate that moisture recycling will decrease 2–3% per °C increase, despite expected global increases in precipitation and evaporation. These results, coupled with inherent moisture limitations of the land surface, imply that the importance of the ocean as a moisture source to land will increase with warming. This is consequential for rain-fed agricultural regions, where crops that rely on recycled precipitation will become increasingly soil-moisture limited.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Langenbrunner, B. Shifting moisture source. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 728 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0596-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0596-4