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Small agricultural reservoirs support water demands during dry spells. However, evaporative losses that are often overlooked in water accounting and management diminish the storage efficiency of these popular but un-inventoried resources. We developed a predictive framework to identify the spatio-temporal extent of small reservoirs (900–100,000 m2) and quantify their evaporative losses using a physically-based model. Focusing on water-stressed regions of Europe (Italy, Spain, and Portugal), our results indicate that the total number and cumulative area of small reservoirs in drier areas of Europe almost doubled in two decades from about 6,200 reservoirs with the cumulative area of 46 km2 in 2,000 to 11,800 reservoirs with the cumulative area of 93.5 km2 in 2020. We observed climate-driven trends in the expansion of agricultural reservoirs and their evaporative losses which exceeded 72 million cubic meters during warm months (April to September) accounting for 38% of their total storage capacity.

The interaction between climate and groundwater forms a complex, coupled system that affects land‐atmosphere feedback processes and thus local climatic parameters. We propose an analytical framework that integrates local groundwater information and soil hydrophysical characteristics to identify regions with bidirectional (two‐way) coupling where groundwater is influenced by climatic factors (e.g., precipitation) and may affect local climate (e.g., through surface fluxes). The framework capitalizes on the concept of the evaporation characteristic length to quantify the hydraulic connection of groundwater to the soil surface. To evaluate the framework, we calculate the maximum depth of hydraulic connection Dmax between groundwater and the soil surface in Hamburg, Germany. For regions with Dmax exceeding the groundwater depth (d), a bidirectional mode of coupling is defined, while Dmax < d implies a unidirectional coupling mode. Our results indicate that climate driven evaporation changes potentially alter the coupling between groundwater and climate depending on soil texture. Moreover, soil hydraulic properties and shallow groundwater tables could play a crucial role in shifting land‐atmosphere feedback processes by influencing the coupling mode. This research provides insights into the groundwater‐climate interactions under various climatic conditions and soil textures which could contribute to sustainable land‐use management practices, particularly in regions characterized by bidirectional coupling., Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

Extremely high land surface temperatures affect soil ecological processes, alter land-atmosphere interactions, and may limit some forms of life. Extreme surface temperature hotspots are presently identified using satellite observations or deduced from complex Earth system models. We introduce a simple, yet physically based analytical approach that incorporates salient land characteristics and atmospheric conditions to globally identify locations of extreme surface temperatures and their upper bounds. We then provide a predictive tool for delineating the spatial extent of land hotspots at the limits to biological adaptability. The model is in good agreement with satellite observations showing that temperature hotspots are associated with high radiation and low wind speed and occur primarily in Middle East and North Africa, with maximum temperatures exceeding 85°C during the study period from 2005 to 2020. We observed an increasing trend in maximum surface temperatures at a rate of 0.17°C/decade. The model allows quantifying how upper bounds of extreme temperatures can increase in a warming climate in the future for which we do not have satellite observations and offers new insights on potential impacts of future warming on limits to plant growth and biological adaptability.

Drought assessment and monitoring are essential for its proper management. Drought indices play a fundamental role in this. This research introduces the Wet-environment Evapotranspiration and Precipitation Standardized Index (WEPSI) for drought assessment and monitoring. WEPSI incorporates water supply and demand into the drought index calculation. WEPSI considers precipitation (P) for water supply and wet-environment evapotranspiration (ETw) for water demand. We use an asymmetric complementary relationship to calculate ETw with actual (ETa) and potential evapotranspiration (ETp). WEPSI is tested in the transboundary Lempa River basin in the Central American dry corridor. ETw is estimated based on evapotranspiration data calculated using the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system hydrological model. To investigate the performance of WEPSI, we compare it with two well-known meteorological indices (Standardized Precipitation Index and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index), together with a hydrological index (Standardized Runoff Index), in terms of statistical metrics and mutual information (MI). We compare WEPSI-derived droughts and historical information, including crop production, cereal yield, and the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI). Results show WEPSI has the highest correlation and MI, and the lowest deviation. It is consistent with the records of the crop production index, cereal yield, and the ONI. Findings show that WEPSI can be used for agricultural drought assessments.

The definition of potential evaporation remains widely debated despite its centrality for hydrologic and climatic models. We employed an analytical pore-scale representation of evaporation from terrestrial surfaces to define potential evaporation using a hypothetical steady state reference temperature that is common to both air and evaporating surface. The feedback between drying land surfaces and overlaying air properties, central in the Bouchet (1963) complementary relationship, is implicitly incorporated in the hypothetical steady state where the sensible heat flux vanishes and the available energy is consumed by evaporation. Evaporation rates predicted based on the steady state reference temperature hypothesis were in good agreement with class A pan evaporation measurements suggesting that evaporation from pans occurs with negligible sensible heat flux. The model facilitates a new generalization of the asymmetric complementary relationship with the asymmetry parameter b analytically predicted for a wide range of meteorological conditions with initial tests yielding good agreement between measured and predicted actual evaporation.