Water availability, evaporative demand and climate change

It is widely thought that global warming increases the evaporative demand of the atmosphere, with adverse effects on fresh water supplies and on agriculture. However, worldwide measurements from the past 30-50 years show decreases. We recently found that as well as reduction in sunlight in some areas, evaporative demand in Australia has been falling because of diminishing wind speed. This project will make the first detailed study of the phenomenon using a new experimental evaporation pan. It will also examine a new global meteorological database for trends in windspeed. The latter will be related to recent predictions of current GCMs.