New findings about the complementary relationship-based evaporation estimation methods

Abstract

Summary A novel approach has been found to estimate the equilibrium surface temperature (Te) of wet environment evaporation (Ew) on a daily basis. Employing this temperature in the Priestley–Taylor equation as well as in the calculation of the slope of the saturation vapor pressure curve with pan measurements improved the accuracy of long-term mean evaporation (E) estimation of the Advection–Aridity (AA) model when validated by Morton’s approach. Complementarity of the potential evaporation (Ep) and E terms was considered both on a daily and a monthly basis with the involved terms always calculated daily from 30 yr of hourly meteorological measurements of the 1961–1990 period at 210 SAMSON stations across the contiguous US. The followings were found: (a) only the original Rome wind function of Penman yields a truly symmetric Complementary Relationship between E and Ep which makes the so-obtained Ep estimates true potential evaporation values; (b) the symmetric version of the modified AA model requires no additional parameters to be optimized; (c) for a long-term mean value of evaporation the modified AA model becomes on a par with Morton’s approach not only in practical applicability but also in its improved accuracy, especially in arid environments with possible strong convection; (d) the latter two models yielded long-term mean annual evaporation estimates with an R2 of 0.95 for the 210 stations, which is all the more remarkable since they employ very different approaches for their Ep calculations; (e) with identical apparent Ep values the two models yielded practically identical long-term mean annual evaporation rates; (f) with the proper choice of the wind function to estimate apparent Ep the long-term mean annual E estimates of the modified AA model are still very close (R2 = 0.93) to those of the Morton approach.