Terrestrial actual evapotranspiration (ETa) is an important component of terrestrial ecosystems because it links the hydrological, energy, and carbon cycles. However, accurately monitoring and understanding the spatial and temporal variability of ETa over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) remains very difficult. Here, the multiyear (2000-2018) monthly ETa on the TP was estimated using the MOD16-STM model supported by datasets of soil properties, meteorological conditions, and remote sensing. The estimated ETa correlates very well with measurements from 9 flux towers, with low root mean square errors (average RMSE = 13.48 mm/month) and mean bias (average MB = 2.85 mm/month), and strong correlation coefficients (R = 0.88) and the index of agreement values (IOA = 0.92). The spatially averaged ETa of the entire TP and the eastern TP (Lon > 90°E) increased significantly, at rates of 1.34 mm/year (p < 0.05) and 2.84 mm/year (p < 0.05) from 2000 to 2018, while no pronounced trend was detected on the western TP (Lon < 90°E). The spatial distribution of ETa and its components were heterogeneous, decreasing from the southeastern to northwestern TP. ETa showed a significantly increasing trend in the eastern TP, and a significant decreasing trend throughout the year in the southwestern TP, particularly in winter and spring. Soil evaporation (Es) accounted for more than 84% of ETa and the spatial distribution of temporal trends was similar to that of ETa over the TP. The amplitudes and rates of variations in ETa were greatest in spring and summer. The multi-year averaged annual terrestrial ETa (over an area of 2444.18×103 km2) was 376.91±13.13 mm/year, equivalent to a volume of 976.52±35.7 km3/year. The average annual evapotranspirated water volume over the whole TP (including all plateau lakes, with an area of 2539.49×103 km2) was about 1028.22±37.8 km3/year. This new estimated ETa dataset is useful for investigating the hydrological impacts of land cover change and will help with better management of watershed water resources across the TP.

File naming and required software

The evapotranspiration data are stored in text format, and the name of the file is "yyyymm_ET.mat", where yyyy represents the year and mm represents the month, for example, 200501_ET.mat represents the data file describing the total evapotranspiration of the Tibetan Plateau in January 2005.

All .mat data files in this dataset can be opened by Matlab's load() function and displayed graphically by the images function.

Data Citations Data citation guideline What's data citation?

Cite as:

Ma, Y., Chen, X. (2021). Monthly 0.01° terrestrial evapotranspiration datasets over the Tibetan Plateau from 2000 to 2018. A Big Earth Data Platform for Three Poles, DOI: 10.11888/Hydro.tpdc.271236. CSTR: 18406.11.Hydro.tpdc.271236. (Download the reference： RIS | Bibtex )

Using this data, the data citation is required to be referenced and the related literatures are suggested to be cited.

References literature

1.Yuan, L., Ma, Y., Chen, X., Wang, Y., Li, Z. (2021). An enhanced MOD16 evapotranspiration model for the Tibetan Plateau during the unfrozen season. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126, e2020JD032787, 2021. (View Details )

Support Program

The Strategic Priority Research Program (A) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No:XDA20060101)

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (No:41975009)

None (No:2019QZKK0103)

None (No:91837208)

National Natural Science Foundation of China(91637312) (No:91637312)

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License： This work is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)