Significant changes are occurring in the Tibetan Plateau, but the amount and variations of evapotranspiration (ET) are with large uncertainty. This study compares 22 ET products and finds that the mean annual ET is 350.34 mm/yr over the Tibetan Plateau, with soil water contribute most to total ET. It also find most products showing an increasing trend. It provides a comprehensive study that supports further ET estimation and potential use of ET data for relevant water and climate studies.

In this paper, we developed a new algorithm to improve the retrieval of aerosol optical depth (AOD) over land with satellite measurement by refining the shape of the spectral surface reflectance to improve the estimated background reflectance in the channel used for AOD retrieval. The results show that the angular effects of the retrievals are largely reduced, including fewer occurrences of negative retrievals. This implies that the users can get more accurate data without angular bias.

The key point of the discrete rainfall–runoff model is to consider the temporal differences in the redisctribution of precipitation in a catchment through the weights and the duration of antecedent precipiation. The wetness conditions at the upper and lower boundaries of soil layer are the key parameters to describe regional moisture condition. The interannual variations in model weights indicates the different catchment response between dry and wet years.