ABSTRACT
The monitoring and forecasting of drought is undergoing a paradigm shift with regard to the treatment of evapotranspiration (ET), evaporative demand (E0), and the consideration of temperature impacts on drought in a changing climate. This chapter demonstrates that ET and E0 are important in drought dynamics and that their accurate and fully physical representations offer new opportunities to improve monitoring and forecasting. The relationship between E0 and ET is particularly important in terms of monitoring and forecasting drought. Accurate knowledge of ET is an essential component in efforts to monitor the global water cycle, climate variability, agricultural productivity, floods, and droughts. Forecasts of E0 at timescales ranging from daily to seasonal are increasingly desired by stakeholders and managers in a number of sectors, including agriculture, water-resource management, and wildland-fire management, largely driven by recent developments highlighting the value of E0 for drought monitoring.
