ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Drylands
Quantifying Historical Trends and Future Projections of Evapotranspiration in Arid Central Asia Using Selected CMIP6 and GLEAM
Provisionally accepted
- 1Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Ürümqi, China
- 2Xinjiang University, Urumqi, China
- 3Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
- 4Institute of Veterinary Medicine of the Tajik Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Dushanbe, Tajikistan
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The fragile social-ecological systems of Central Asia's arid regions (ACA) are profoundly influenced by evapotranspiration (ET), a key process governing water and energy cycles. Given the region's limited precipitation, extreme climatic variability, and escalating water demands, ET plays a pivotal role in determining water availability, agricultural sustainability, and ecosystem resilience. Therefore, this study aims to comprehensively explore the historical characteristics, to project the future trends and the relationships with climate factors of ET in ACA using the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models under different SSP scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) during 2021-2100. The results demonstrated that, during the historical period (1985-2014), the annual Eta derived from GLEAM exhibited an increased trend with the value of 0.43 mm/a, and the multi-model ensemble (MME) data from five optimal CMIP6 models selected by the Distance between Indices of Simulation and Observation (DISO) against GLEAM demonstrated a significant increased trend (0.98 mm/a, p<0.05). The future ET exhibited increased trends under the SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5 across the annual, growing season, spring, autumn, and winter with the largest value for annual ET under the SSP5-8.5 (0.79 mm/a). For the spatial distributions, the annual ET under SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, SSP5-8.5 shows increased trends over 85% regions, especially in northern Kazakhstan and the Kunlun Mountains. In growing season, under SSP1-2.6, 48% regions exhibit reduced ET. Finally, ET is positively correlated with temperature under SSP1-2.6 and SSP2-4.5, particularly in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and southern Xinjiang, and its correlation with precipitation reaches 0.52 under SSP1-2.6. These findings provide new insights into the comprehensive ET variations highlighting the imperative for hydrological circulation in ACA.
Keywords: Arid regions of Central Asia, CMIP6, DISO, evapotranspiration, Future dynamical variations
Received: 01 Dec 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zhang, Yin, Ni, Zhang, Sulaimon, Li and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zengyun Hu
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