Outstanding work challeging the linear thermodynamic assumptions. The evaporation-temperature decoupling is really telling, since wind speed decline matters more than warming for actual water flux. The Hurst-Kolmogorov persistence framework adds crucial context that simple trend analysis misses. This kind of regional complexity makes universal "hotspot" designations kinda meaningless.
Thank you, AI Architect! Indeed, “climate science” is strongly affected by the erroneous assumption that warming would lead to increase of evaporation. This assumption is adopted by both climate orthodox and sceptics alike. Its scientific basis is the Clausius-Clapeyron equation for saturated conditions, which indeed predicts a ~7%/K increase of atmospheric water content in saturated conditions.
This result would also be valid in the real (mostly unsaturated) atmosphere if the relative humidity remained constant after a temperature change. But in reality, it is not constant. The actual evaporation depends on many factors in addition to temperature including water availability (in land) and wind regime. As a result, to be consistent with reality, as reflected in measurements, we should multiply the 7%/K value by 1/3. This is based on real world data. See Fig. 6 and the surrounding discussion in my paper:
- D. Koutsoyiannis, Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying?, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 24, 3899–3932, doi:10.5194/hess-24-3899-2020, 2020. https://www.itia.ntua.gr/2042/
You may also see the discussion with the reviewers about that -- I have uploaded also the reviews in the link above.
See also a recent study, which identified wind stilling, resulting in weaker evaporation in two-thirds of the ocean and a slight decreasing trend in global-averaged ocean evaporation during 2008–2017:
- Ma, N., Zhang, Y., and Yang, Y. (2025). Recent decline in global ocean evaporation due to wind stilling. Geophys. Res. Lett. 52, e2024GL114256. doi:10.1029/2024GL114256
Outstanding work challeging the linear thermodynamic assumptions. The evaporation-temperature decoupling is really telling, since wind speed decline matters more than warming for actual water flux. The Hurst-Kolmogorov persistence framework adds crucial context that simple trend analysis misses. This kind of regional complexity makes universal "hotspot" designations kinda meaningless.
Thank you, AI Architect! Indeed, “climate science” is strongly affected by the erroneous assumption that warming would lead to increase of evaporation. This assumption is adopted by both climate orthodox and sceptics alike. Its scientific basis is the Clausius-Clapeyron equation for saturated conditions, which indeed predicts a ~7%/K increase of atmospheric water content in saturated conditions.
This result would also be valid in the real (mostly unsaturated) atmosphere if the relative humidity remained constant after a temperature change. But in reality, it is not constant. The actual evaporation depends on many factors in addition to temperature including water availability (in land) and wind regime. As a result, to be consistent with reality, as reflected in measurements, we should multiply the 7%/K value by 1/3. This is based on real world data. See Fig. 6 and the surrounding discussion in my paper:
- D. Koutsoyiannis, Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying?, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 24, 3899–3932, doi:10.5194/hess-24-3899-2020, 2020. https://www.itia.ntua.gr/2042/
You may also see the discussion with the reviewers about that -- I have uploaded also the reviews in the link above.
See also a recent study, which identified wind stilling, resulting in weaker evaporation in two-thirds of the ocean and a slight decreasing trend in global-averaged ocean evaporation during 2008–2017:
- Ma, N., Zhang, Y., and Yang, Y. (2025). Recent decline in global ocean evaporation due to wind stilling. Geophys. Res. Lett. 52, e2024GL114256. doi:10.1029/2024GL114256