The climatology, trends and leading modes of land surface latent heat flux (LHF) and sensible heat flux (SHF) as well as their responses to monsoon and precipitation in global land monsoon domains are presented. During the past three decades, LHF and SHF have generally undergone a rising and decreasing trend (that is, (LHF+, SHF−)), respectively, in Asian, North African, Austrian, and South American monsoon domains. Moreover, the increasing rate of LHF was higher than the decreasing rate of SHF, which causes a decreased trend in Bowen ratio. Two other dominant trend patterns, (LHF−, SHF−) and (LHF+, SHF+), are observed in South African and South American monsoon domains, respectively. The trends in LHF and SHF are closely linked to increasing global monsoon intensity and precipitation, especially for the monsoon domain that has annual precipitation lower than 1300 mm yr⁻¹. Singular value decomposition (SVD) analyses show that monsoon strength explains 25.2% and 22.2% total covariance of LHF and SHF respectively in the first modes, and that precipitation slightly raises the percentages up to 27.8% and 24% respectively. The increasing monsoon and precipitation on one hand favor more land surface available energy being converted into LHF; on the other hand they enhance the LHF by increasing the land surface net radiation. Moreover, remarkable phase shifts in LHF and SHF are observed for monsoon domains during late-1990s, which are in phase with those of precipitation and monsoon strength. The intensifying LHF and precipitation indicate the acceleration of hydrological cycle in global terrestrial monsoon domains.

As a land–atmosphere coupling “hot spot”, the northern China climate transition zone has a sharp spatial gradient of hydrothermal conditions, which plays an essential role in shaping the spatial and temporal pattern of evapotranspiration-precipitation coupling, but whose mechanisms still remain unclear. This study analyzes the spatial and temporal variation in land–atmosphere coupling strength (CS) in the climate transitional zone of northern China and its relationship with soil moisture and air temperature. Results show that CS gradually transitions from strong positive in the northwest to negative in the southeast and northeast corners. The spatial distribution of CS is closely related to climatic hydrothermal conditions, where soil moisture plays a more dominant role: CS increases first, and then decreases with increasing soil moisture, with the threshold of soil moisture at 0.2; CS gradually transitions from positive to negative at soil moisture between 0.25 and 0.35; CS shows an exponential decreasing trend with increasing temperature. In terms of temporal variation, CS is strongest in spring and weakens sequentially in summer, autumn, and winter, and has significant interdecadal fluctuations. The trend in CS shifts gradually from significantly negative in the west to a non-significant positive in the east. Soil moisture variability dominates the intra-annual variability of CS in the study regions, and determines the interannual variation of CS in arid and semi-arid areas. Moreover, the main reason for the positive and negative spatial differences in CS in the study area is the different driving regime of evapotranspiration (ET). ET is energy-limited in the southern part of the study area, leading to a positive correlation between ET and lifting condensation level (LCL), while in most of the northern part, ET is water-limited and is negatively correlated with LCL; LCL has a negative correlation with P across the study area, thus leading to a negative ET-P coupling in the south and a positive coupling in the north.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an essential component of the land–atmosphere water cycle. In this work, the trend of ET and its dominant factors during 1982 to 2011 are investigated in the northern drought-prone belt of China (NDPB) based on five datasets, including the gridded FLUXNET, using the Pearson correlation and linear regression methods. Specially, we focus on the increasing contribution of vegetation in the change of ET. During 1982–2011, summer ET significantly increased at the rate of 0.33 mm/year (p < 0.05) in the NDPB. However, similar to global-mean ET, the ET in NDPB also experienced a pronounced fluctuation during 1999 and 2002. The role of water supply differed remarkably before and after the fluctuation while the atmospheric demand maintained weak constraint on ET. Before the fluctuation (during 1982–2000), ET correlated significantly (p < 0.01) and positively with soil moisture, indicating ET was primarily limited by water supply. However, their correlation weakened remarkably after the fluctuation when soil moisture decreased to the lowest level for the past thirty years, indicating that neither moisture supply nor atmospheric demand dominated the ET during this period. In contrast, vegetation leaf area index (LAI) maintained consistent significant (p < 0.01) and positive correlation with ET before and after the fluctuation in the NDPB, and it reflected over 60% of the change in ET. Moreover, the LAI in NDPB increased by 19.6% which was more than double of the global-mean increase. The ET increase due to rising LAI offset the ET decrease due to reduction of soil moisture, and vegetation became the primary constraint on ET during 2001–2011. The expansion of vegetation may intensify the risk of drought and cause conflicting demands for water between the ecosystem and humans in the NDPB, especially in the case of weak summer monsoon.