Analytical Complementary Relationship Between Actual and Potential Evaporation Defined by Steady State Reference Surface Temperature

Abstract:

The definition of potential evaporation remains widely debated despite its centrality for hydrologic and climatic models. We employed an analytical pore-scale representation of evaporation from porous surfaces to define potential evaporation using a hypothetical steady-state reference temperature for air and evaporating surface. The feedback between drying land surfaces and overlaying air properties is implicitly incorporated in the hypothetical steady-state where the sensible heat flux vanishes and available energy is consumed by evaporation. Potential evaporation based on steady-state surface temperature was in surprisingly good agreement with class A pan evaporation measurements suggesting that pan evaporation occurs with negligible sensible heat flux. The model facilitates a new analytical generalization of the asymmetric complementary relationship across a wide range of meteorological conditions with good agreement between measured and predicted actual evaporation.