Evapotranspiration is a key factor in regional hydrological processes and water resources management. Long‐term variation of evapotranspiration affects the regional climate wet/dry tendency and agricultural production profoundly. Thus, reference evapotranspiration (ET0) values for 46 meteorological stations in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) were calculated for 1957–2014 using the FAO‐Penman–Monteith (FAO‐PM) method. The variation patterns of ET0 values were determined based on the principal component analysis (PCA) method. In addition, the methods of cross wavelet transform (CWT), Kendall tau‐b correlation coefficient determination and cross‐correlation method were applied in the assessment of the correlation between ET0 values and large‐scale climate oscillations, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Oceanic Niño3.4 Sea Surface Temperature Index (NINO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Annual ET0 patterns for three dominant geographic subregions of the YRD (the southeastern, northwestern and mid‐eastern) were determined. There were only several discontinuous lower timescale bands between the three change patterns of annual ET0 and climate oscillations. In seasonal scale, the temporal patterns of ET0 changed simultaneously with the NAO, NINO and PDO in spring, the PDO in summer and the NAO in winter. The monthly ET0 was mostly influenced by the NAO and IOD in January, the IOD in February, the IOD and NINO in March, the NINO in June, the PDO in July to October, the NINO, IOD and NAO in October and the NINO in December. The lag times for the ET0 changes were about 0–5 months for the NAO and NINO, 1–2 months for the PDO and 4 months for the IOD. |
