Assessing Evapotranspiration Estimates from the Second Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP-2) Simulations

Abstract This study assesses the simulations of global-scale evapotranspiration from the second Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP-2) within a global water budget framework. The scatter in the GSWP-2 global evapotranspiration estimates from various land surface models can constrain the global annual water budget fluxes to within ±2.5% and, by using estimates of global precipitation, the residual ocean evaporation estimate falls within the range of other independently derived bulk estimates. The GSWP-2 scatter, however, cannot entirely explain the imbalance of the annual fluxes from a modern-era, observationally based global water budget assessment. Inconsistencies in the magnitude and timing of seasonal variations between the global water budget terms are also found. Intermodel inconsistencies in evapotranspiration are largest for high-latitude interannual variability as well as for interseasonal variations in the tropics, and analyses with field-scale data also highlight model disparity at estimating evap...

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