Effects of Continental Evaporation for Precipitation Over East Asia in the Past and the Future of HadGEM2-AO Climate Model

Land evaporation contribution to precipitation over East Asia is studied to understand terrestrial moisture source of continental precipitation. Moisture recycling of precipitation relying on terrestrial evaporation is estimated based on the analysis method of Van der Ent et al. (2010). We utilize HadGEM2-AO simulations for the period of 1970 similar to 1999 and 2070 similar to 2099 from RCP8.5. Globally, 46% of terrestrial precipitation is depending from continental evaporation. 58% of terrestrial evaporation returns as continental precipitation. Over East Asia, precipitation has been affected by local evaporation and transported moisture. The advection of upwind continental evaporation results from the prevailing westerlies from the midwestern of Eurasian continent. For the present-day period, about 66% of the precipitation over the land of East Asia originates from land evaporation. Regionally, the ratios change and the ratios of precipitation terrestrial origin over the Northern inland and Southern coast of East Asia are 82% and 48%, respectively. Seasonally, the continental moisture recycling ratio is larger during summer (JJA) than winter (DJF). According to RCP8.5, moisture recycling ratio is expected to change. At the end of the 21st century, the impact of continental moisture sources for precipitation over East Asia is projected to be reduced by about 5% compared to at the end of 20th century. To understand the future changes, moisture residence time change is investigated using depletion and replenishment time.