Li et al. (2026) Daily Pan Evaporation Reconstruction Reveals a Climate‐Gradient‐Dependent Evaporation Paradox Across China

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Identification

• Journal: Hydrological Processes
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-01
• Authors: Ruibiao Li, Xi Cheng, Kaikui Cai, Lian Hu, Kai Huang, Jincheng Li, Yong Liu, Qingsong Jiang
• DOI: 10.1002/hyp.70694

Research Groups

• Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment Research for Temperate Eastern China (RCEC)

Short Summary

This study presents an observation-aware framework to reconstruct daily pan evaporation records across China's climate gradients, addressing instrument transitions and missing data issues. The framework achieved high performance in reconstructing daily pan evaporation values.

Objective

• Investigate the feasibility of developing a homogenized daily pan evaporation dataset for 1351 stations across China using an observation-aware framework.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: National scale, covering China's climate gradients.
• Temporal Scale: Daily time step from 2000 to 2024.

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • Meteorology-dependent random forest model for instrument homogenization
  • Transformer driven exclusively by meteorological forcing for daily reconstruction
• Data sources:
  • Historical D20 observations
  • Satellite, observation, and reanalysis data

Main Results

• The Transformer achieved the highest performance among evaluated models (NSE = 0.76; RMSE = 0.83 mm day−1).
• Spatially heterogeneous response to warming, with significant increases in evaporation in some basins and declines in others.
• Declining shortwave radiation and moisture-related constraints offset the positive contribution of temperature in one basin.

Contributions

• Original value lies in the development of an observation-aware framework that separates observing-system discontinuities from climate signals before daily reconstruction and attribution, enabling local data recalibration and independent validation.

Funding

• National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41875062)
• Strategic Pilot Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA20060402)

Citation

@article{Li2026Daily,
  author = {Li, Ruibiao and Cheng, Xi and Cai, Kaikui and Hu, Lian and Huang, Kai and Li, Jincheng and Liu, Yong and Jiang, Qingsong},
  title = {Daily Pan Evaporation Reconstruction Reveals a Climate‐Gradient‐Dependent Evaporation Paradox Across China},
  journal = {Hydrological Processes},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1002/hyp.70694},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70694}
}