Huge parts of world drying up due to land ‘evapotranspiration’:
StudyOctober 11th, 2010 - 2:44 pm ICT by ANI London, Oct 11
(ANI): A group of researchers examining ‘evapotranspiration’ on
a global basis have concluded that the soils in large areas of
the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia,
Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past
decade. Most climate models have suggested that
evapotranspiration, which is the movement of water from the land
to the atmosphere, would increase with global warming. The new
research found that’s exactly what was happening from 1982 to
the late 1990s. But in 1998, this significant increase in
evapotranspiration - which had been seven millimeters per year -
slowed dramatically or stopped. In large portions of the world,
soils are now becoming drier than they used to be, releasing
less water and offsetting some moisture increases elsewhere. Due
to the limited number of decades for which data are available,
scientists say they can’t be sure whe