Deuterium excess as a proxy for continental moisture recycling and plant transpiration

Studying the evaporation process and its link to the atmospheric circulation is central for a better understanding of the feedbacks between the surface water components and the atmosphere. Stable water isotopes are ideal tools to investigate surface evaporation as they are naturally available tracers of water phase changes in the atmosphere. The strength of isotope fractionation processes depends on environmental conditions such as relative humidity and temperature. In this study, we use five months of deuterium excess (d) measurements at the hourly to daily timescale from a cavity ring-down laser spectrometer to characterise the evaporation source of low-level continental water vapour at the long-term hydrometeorological monitoring site Rietholzbach in northeastern Switzerland. To reconstruct the phase change history of the air masses in which we measure the d signature and to diagnose its area of surface evaporation we apply an established Lagrangian moisture source diagnostic. With the help of a correlation analysis we investigate the strength of the relation between d measurements and the moisture source conditions. Temporal episodes with a duration of a few days of strong anticorrelation between d and relative humidity as well as temperature are identified. The role of plant transpiration, the large-scale advection of remotely evaporated moisture, the local boundary layer dynamics at the measurement site and recent precipitation at the site of evaporation are discussed as reasons for the existence of these modes of strong anticorrelation between d and moisture source conditions. The relation between d in atmospheric water vapour at the measurement site and the relative humidity conditions at the location of evaporation exhibits distinct characteristics for land surface evaporation and ocean evaporation. We show that the importance of continental moisture recycling and the contribution of plant transpiration to the continental evaporation flux can be deduced from the d-relative humidity relation at the seasonal timescale as well as for individual events. The slope of the relation between d and the diagnosed moisture source relative humidity provides a novel framework to estimate the transpiration fraction of land evapotranspiration at the local to continental scale. Over the whole analysis period (August to December 2011) a transpiration fraction of the evapotranspiration flux over the continental part of the moisture source region of 63% is found albeit with a large event-to-event variability (0% to 99%) for continental Europe. During days of strong local moisture recycling a higher overall transpiration fraction of 82% (varying between 65% and 94%) is found. Such Lagrangian estimates of the transpiration part of continental evaporation could potentially be useful for the verification of model estimates of this important land-atmosphere coupling parameter.