Climate change is expected to intensify the global hydrological cycle and to alter evapotranspiration, but direct observational constraints are lacking at the global scale. Now a data-driven, machine-learning technique and a suite of process-based models have been used to show that from 1982 to 1997 global evapotranspiration increased by about 7.1 millimetres per year per decade. But since 1998 this increase has ceased, probably because of moisture limitation in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Martin Jung
- Markus Reichstein
- Ke Zhang
