Term: water_evapotranspiration_flux

Unit: kg m-2 s-1

Unit ref: KSP2

AMIP: evspsbl

GRIB:

Water means water in all phases. "Evapotranspiration" means all water vapor fluxes into the atmosphere from the surface: liquid evaporation, sublimation and transpiration. Evaporation is the conversion of liquid or solid into vapor. Transpiration is the process by which liquid water in plant stomata is transferred as water vapor into the atmosphere. (The conversion of solid alone into vapor is called "sublimation".) In accordance with common usage in geophysical disciplines, "flux" implies per unit area, called "flux density" in physics. Unless indicated in the cell_methods attribute, a quantity is assumed to apply to the whole area of each horizontal grid box.

Term: water_evapotranspiration_flux

Unit: kg m-2 s-1

Unit ref: KSP2

AMIP: evspsbl

GRIB:

Water means water in all phases. Evaporation is the conversion of liquid or solid into vapor. (The conversion of solid alone into vapor is called "sublimation".) The process of transpiration is not included. In accordance with common usage in geophysical disciplines, "flux" implies per unit area, called "flux density" in physics. Unless indicated in the cell_methods attribute, a quantity is assumed to apply to the whole area of each horizontal grid box. Previously, the qualifier where_type was used to specify that the quantity applies only to the part of the grid box of the named type. Names containing the where_type qualifier are deprecated and newly created data should use the cell_methods attribute to indicate the horizontal area to which the quantity applies. In the versions before 56 transpiration was not mentioned and for versions 56 to 71 it was allowed to use water_evaporation_flux as an alias.