The accurate determination of land surface water fluxes at various spatiotemporal scales remains a challenge in hydrological sciences. It is intuitive that land surface net water flux (i.e., infiltration minus evapotranspiration) directly affects near-surface soil moisture. However, there exists no hydrological model suitable to calculate net water flux based on measured near-surface soil moisture data…. More
Future projections of evapotranspiration (ET) are of critical importance for agricultural and freshwater management and for predicting land–atmosphere feedbacks on the climate system. However, ET from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) simulations exhibits substantial biases, bolstering little confidence in future ET projections. Despite poor predictive skill and large bias of ET… More
Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the atmospheric and terrestrial water and energy budgets. Satellite‐based vegetation index approaches have used remotely sensed vegetation and reanalysis meteorological properties with surface energy balance models to estimate global ET (MOD16 ET). We reconstructed satellite retrievals using in situ meteorology (Argonne‐ET) and evaluated them using a dense network… More
Reforesting and managing ecosystems have been proposed as ways to mitigate global warming and offset anthropogenic carbon emissions. The intent of our opinion piece is to provide a perspective on how well plants and ecosystems sequester carbon. The ability of individual plants and ecosystems to mine carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as defined by rates… More
Aerodynamic canopy height (ha) is the effective height of vegetation canopy for its influence on atmospheric fluxes and is a key parameter of surface‐atmosphere coupling. However, methods to estimate ha from data are limited. This synthesis evaluates the applicability and robustness of the calculation of ha from eddy covariance momentum‐flux data. At 69 forest sites,… More