Key climatic drivers of terrestrial evaporation, such as precipitation, total incoming radiation and near-surface air temperature, are known to be affected by different teleconnection patterns. Therefore, this effect is likely to propagate to the dynamics in land evaporation.4 Figure 1a shows that monthly evaporation anomalies are significantly (p < 0.05) driven by the main modes of climate variability in about half of the land surface. Clear hotspots, where up to 40% of the variance in land evaporation can be explained by the CIs can be identified for different seasons (Fig. 1b). In these seasonal hotspots, terrestrial evaporation is typically sensitive to a limited number of modes, suggesting both the control of these modes over the local meteorology and the control of the latter over evaporation.

Fig. 1 Impact of teleconnections on terrestrial evaporation. a maximum explained variance (R2) of the LASSO models targeting the monthly anomalies of terrestrial evaporation based on the CIs over each season, and b the R2 for the models fitted for December–January–February (DJF), March–April–May (MAM), June-July-August (JJA), and September–October–November (SON) separately. The net of dots is presented at a 2° resolution to aid visibility, and highlights regions with a statistically significant R2 (p < 0.05). Modes of climate variability dominating the variability in terrestrial evaporation in these seasonal hotspots are listed according to their average rank in the region of interest, which is represented by the length of each box (the dark shaded box in the background represents the highest possible rank; i.e., the mode is ranked first in every pixel of the hotspot). Importance ranking is based on the magnitude of the regression coefficients from the resulting LASSO model. The sign indicates the relation between the CI describing the mode of variability and evaporation (Supplementary Figs. 1–4), and the blue shades are informative of the average lag (in months) between the CI and the impact on evaporation Full size image

Figure 1 shows that throughout the year, variability in terrestrial evaporation in Amazonia is influenced by multiple teleconnections: although ENSO is identified as an important driver of variability in December–February in the east, and in March–May in the south, evaporation dynamics in the rainforest are also sensitive to the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) pattern, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the Tropical North Atlantic (TNA) pattern. During June–August, the TNA has also a distinct effect in the arc of deforestation (i.e., south of the Brazilian rainforest).

Given the high volumes of precipitation in these regions, dynamics in terrestrial evaporation are primarily driven by variations in energy supply, as shown in Fig. 2b (note that while we used total incoming radiation as a proxy for the energy supply, results using surface net radiation show similar patterns as shown in Supplementary Fig. 13). Rainfall interception loss also forms a substantial portion of the total evaporative flux in the rainforest,29,34 making Amazonian evaporation sensitive to changes in rainfall dynamics as well. The sensitivity of rainfall interception loss to ENSO due to its influence on precipitation variability was already documented by Miralles et al.4 Figure 2a shows that this mechanism mostly explains the impact of ENSO in the northeast of the rainforest during December–February (see also Supplementary Fig. 5), but not for the arc of deforestation where rainfall dynamics are not affected. In the latter, the impact of ENSO and TNA on evaporation comes from their influence on the energy supply (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Figs. 10 and 11), mostly due to changes in air temperature and cloud cover. Note that ENSO is also known to induce substantial variability in tropical Atlantic sea-surface temperatures, driving the TNA and Tropical South Atlantic (TSA) patterns that in turn alter the meteorology in the northeast of Brazil35,36 (Supplementary Figs. 7 and 8 and Supplementary Figs. 11 and 12). Finally, the multidecadal AMO typically modulates the intensity of the ENSO cycle,37,38 hence the effect of AMO on evaporation in Amazonia is indirect.

Fig. 2 Primary drivers of terrestrial evaporation and their dependence on teleconnections. a R2 of the LASSO models targeting the anomalies of precipitation, and total incoming radiation based on the CIs for DJF, MAM, JJA and SON separately. The net of dots is presented at a 2° resolution to aid visibility, and highlights regions with a statistically significant R2 (p < 0.05). For comparison, the regions of interest were aligned with the ones in Fig. 1. b primary climatic driver of terrestrial evaporation. Classification is obtained by ranking the regression coefficients from the LASSO model targeting the anomalies of terrestrial evaporation based on the anomalies of precipitation and total incoming radiation. Pixels where the regression coefficient for precipitation is top-ranked are classified as water-driven, whereas pixels where the regression coefficient for radiation is top-ranked are classified as energy-driven. NS indicates non-significant pixels Full size image

In the southwestern Pacific, ENSO, IOD, AMO and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) influence land evaporation during June–August and September–November (Fig. 1b), especially in the east of Australia, a semiarid region driven by water availability (Fig. 2b). Results in Fig. 2a show that in June–August, precipitation in central east Australia is affected, mainly by SAM and ENSO (see also Supplementary Fig. 7). On the other hand, the hotspot in September–November is due to a combined effect on the water and energy supply induced by ENSO and SAM (Supplementary Fig. 8), and particularly by the effect of IOD on the energy supply in the southeast (Supplementary Fig. 12). This sensitivity of evaporation to ENSO in east Australia is in agreement with the findings in Miralles et al.,4 while Bauer-Marschallinger et al.21 pointed to the relation between the IOD and soil moisture dynamics in Australia. A positive phase of the IOD also typically results in wet anomalies in the Horn of Africa (Supplementary Fig. 5),21 which explains the hotspot in December–February shown in Figs. 1b and 2a.

In contrast to the Southern Hemisphere, the effect of individual modes of climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere is generally concentrated to specific regions. This confined effect is in agreement with the findings by Zhu et al.15 on the impact of teleconnections on global carbon fluxes. In northwestern Europe, winter time terrestrial evaporation is shown to be sensitive to modes of variability known to modulate the European winter climate: the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the East Atlantic (EA) pattern.37,39,40,41 During December–February, evaporation dynamics in the region are not just influenced by the energy supply (Fig. 2b) but also by precipitation, due to its influence on rainfall interception.34 The positive phases of NAO and EA typically bring more precipitation and higher temperatures to northern Europe during winter,41 as confirmed in Supplementary Figs. 5 and 9, which explains the impact of these modes on terrestrial evaporation shown in Fig. 1b. At the same time, negative precipitation anomalies typically occur in the south of Europe during the positive phase of NAO41 (Supplementary Fig. 5), which lead to a decline in evaporation in this water-driven region (Fig. 2b), and explains the small hotspot along the west coast of Portugal shown in Fig. 1b (not highlighted, but statistically significant). Figure 2a shows that more towards the centre of the European continent, the energy supply during winter is affected, mainly by both NAO and EA (Supplementary Fig. 9), thereby the influence of these teleconnection patterns on evaporation shown in central Europe.

In eastern Europe and western Russia, the East Atlantic Western Russia (EAWR) pattern starts affecting evaporation dynamics in March–May in the north, and gradually becomes more dominant in summertime (Fig. 1b). Figure 2a shows how the available energy, driving land evaporation during that time of the year (Fig. 2b), is clearly impacted by the EAWR (Supplementary Fig. 11). These findings agree with those by Ionita et al.,42 and indicate that the positive phase of the EAWR typically results in negative temperature anomalies over eastern Europe and western Russia (Supplementary Figs. 10 and 11), resulting in the negative anomaly in land evaporation observed in Fig. 1b. In the northeast of Russia, terrestrial evaporation is mainly sensitive to the IOD, and the West Pacific (WP) and East Pacific/North Pacific (EPNP) patterns. Both the WP and EPNP induce substantial variability in air temperatures across the region,1,43,44 resulting in anomalies in the energy supply (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Figs. 10 and 11), which propagate to the dynamics in terrestrial evaporation.

In North America, terrestrial evaporation responds to different modes of variability, with the EPNP, NAO, WP, the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) and the Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern being the most dominant ones. Figure 1b shows that the EPNP pattern affects evaporation dynamics in the area surrounding the Great Lakes from September to May. The impact of the EPNP on evaporation in North America is opposite to its impact in Siberia (Supplementary Figs. 1–4). This is due to the contrasting effects of the EPNP on the energy supply in both areas (Supplementary Figs. 9–12). Figure 1b also shows that the Labrador Peninsula is largely influenced by NAO and NAM from December to May, with negative anomalies in evaporation associated to a positive phase of NAO and NAM (Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2). This effect is driven by the impact of NAO and NAM on the supply of energy in the region, as shown in Supplementary Figs. 9 and 10. NAO is sometimes considered as a regional-scale expression of the large-scale NAM, both having analogous climatological impacts in North America.39,41,45 The positive phases of NAO and NAM also result in higher temperatures southwards, along with positive radiation anomalies at the East Coast of the United States,39,45 as illustrated in Supplementary Fig. 9. Despite the strong energy control over terrestrial evaporation in this region (Fig. 2b), the impact of NAO and NAM on evaporation appears lower and is not highlighted in Fig. 1b. The PNA is mainly affecting evaporation in the Canadian Prairies: higher evaporation is associated to the positive phase of the PNA during the winter months (Fig. 1b), due to the impact of PNA on the energy supply in the region (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Fig. 9).

Finally, the hotspot in the southwest of the United States, particularly Mexico, is primarily affected by ENSO, TSA and SAM (Fig. 1b). Given the low precipitation volumes in the area, evaporation dynamics are mainly water-driven (see Fig. 2b). However, only ENSO leads to substantial changes in precipitation, preferentially in winter time (Supplementary Fig. 5), while the remaining modes act upon evaporation by affecting the atmospheric demand for water (Supplementary Figs. 9 and 10). During the warm phase of ENSO (i.e., El Niño), the area typically receives more precipitation37 (Supplementary Fig. 5), resulting in less evaporative stress and positive anomalies in terrestrial evaporation.4