Association of Agrometeorologists

Projections of CMIP5 evaporation data sets under future climate change scenarios and comparison with estimates from the observations over peninsular India

G. PURNA DURGA, A. NAGA RAJESH and T.V. LAKSHMI KUMAR

Present study commences from the time series analysis of evaporation data sets obtained from the Coupled Modeled Inter comparison Project of Phase 5 (CMIP5) for the study period 1979 to 2100 under the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 emission scenarios over Interior Peninsular region during the Northeast monsoon (October to December) period. Further, a comparative analysis has been carried out with the evapotranspiration (ET) estimated from the Hargreaves and Samani (1982) using the temperature data of India Meteorological Department for the period 1979 to 2005. Our results show that evaporation trends are increasing with more prominence in RCP 8.5 scenario. This increase in evaporation has been attributed to increase in air temperature which is an undisputed fact under future climate change scenario. Different climate models of CMIP5 show mixed response by displaying the positive and negative correlations with the Hargreaves ET over the study region. The results of the study will be useful in understanding the bias between the modeled data sets and the estimates of ET from the observations.

Projection, CMIP5, evaporation, climate change, scenarios, peninsular India