Fig. 5: Evapotranspiration sensitivity decreases as system warms and storage changes decrease over time.
From: Evapotranspiration depletes groundwater under warming over the contiguous United States
Scatter plots of the sensitivity to warming (change in evapotranspiration (ET) per change in potential evapotranspiration (PET)) versus aridity index for the first (green dots) and fourth (blue dots) years of simulation for the 1.5 °C (a), 2 °C (b), and 4 °C (c) scenarios. The systematic decrease in sensitivity (i.e. downward shift) can be explained by storage changes increasing water availability relative to the Budyko framework for equilibrium systems (d). This storage contribution increases the system response for a given PET perturbation (e).
