Spatial-temporal variations of terrestrial evapotranspiration across China from 2000 to 2019

Terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) refers to a key process in the hydrological cycle by which water is transferred from the Earth's surface to lower atmosphere. With spatiotemporal variations, ET plays a crucial role in the global ecosystem and affects vegetation distribution and productivity, climate, and water resources. China features a complex, diverse natural environment, leading to high spatiotemporal heterogeneity in ET and climatic variables. However, past and future ET trends in China remain largely unexplored. Thus, by using MOD16 products and meteorological datasets, this study examined the spatiotemporal variations of ET in China from 2000 to 2019 and analyzed what is behind changes, and explored future ET trends. Climate variation in China from 2000 to 2019 was statistically significant and had a remarkable impact on ET. Average annual ET increased at a rate of 5.3746 mm yr(-1) (P < 0.01) during the study period. The main drivers of the trend are increasing precipitation and wind speed. The increase in ET can also be explained to some extent by increasing temperature, decreasing sunshine duration and relative humidity. The zonation results show that the increase in temperature, wind speed, and precipitation and the decrease in relative humidity had large and positive effects on ET growth, and the decrease in sunshine duration had either promoting or inhibiting effects in different agricultural regions. Pixel-based variations in ET exhibited an overall increasing trend and obvious spatial volatility. The Hurst exponent indicates that the future trend of ET in China is characterized by significant anti-persistence, with widely distributed areas expected to experience a decline in ET. These findings improve the understanding of the role of climate variability in hydrological processes, and the ET variability in question will ultimately affect the climate system.