The variability of evaporation during the HAPEX-Sahel Intensive Observation Period

Abstract

The variation in evaporative fraction and actual evaporation is examined for three sample days in the HAPEX-Sahel Intensive Observation Period (IOP), including data from all the vegetation types and sites. The trends in evaporative fraction over the IOP are also presented for eight sites. The high rate of evaporation from bare soil in the days following rainfall produces a variability in evaporation which makes differences between sites difficult to interpret on a day-to-day basis, but over the whole IOP it is shown that the millet uses a smaller proportion of the available energy for evaporation than the tiger bush or fallow savannah. The combined effect of differences in the total energy used and its partitioning into evaporation and sensible heat flux is demonstrated from the trends in cumulative total energy use and evaporation at the three southern sites, where it is shown that there is systematically less evaporation from the millet than from the savannah or tiger bush sites