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The complementary relationship in estimation of regional evapotranspiration: The complementary relationship areal evapotranspiration and advection‐aridity models
Author(s) -
Hobbins Michael T.,
Ramírez Jorge A.,
Brown Thomas C.,
Claessens Lodevicus H. J. M.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/2000wr900358
Subject(s) - evapotranspiration , advection , arid , environmental science , aridity index , precipitation , sunshine duration , water balance , hydrology (agriculture) , climatology , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geography , geology , ecology , paleontology , physics , geotechnical engineering , biology , thermodynamics
Two implementations of the complementary relationship hypothesis for regional evapotranspiration, the Complementary Relationship Areal Evapotranspiration (CRAE) model and the Advection‐Aridity (AA) model, are evaluated against independent estimates of regional evapotranspiration derived from long‐term, large‐scale water balances (1962–1988) for 120 minimally impacted basins in the conterminous United States. The CRAE model overestimates annual evapotranspiration by 2.5% of mean annual precipitation, and the AA model underestimates annual evapotranspiration by 10.6% of precipitation. Generally, increasing humidity leads to decreasing absolute errors for both models, and increasing aridity leads to increasing overestimation by the CRAE model and underestimation by the AA model, with the exception of high, arid basins, where the AA model overestimates evapotranspiration. Overall, the results indicate that the advective portion of the AA model must be recalibrated before it may be used successfully on a regional basis and that the CRAE model accurately predicts monthly regional evapotranspiration.