A water balance-based, spatiotemporal evaluation of terrestrial evapotranspiration products across the contiguous United States

Accurate gridded estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) are essential to the analysis of terrestrial water budgets. In this study, ET estimates from three gridded energy balance-based products (ET_EB) with independent model formations and data forcings are evaluated for their ability to capture long-term climatology and interannual variability in ET derived from a terrestrial water budget (ET_WB) for 671 gauged basins across the contiguous United States. All three ET_EB products have low spatial bias and accurately capture interannual variability of ET_WB in the central United States, where ET_EB and ancillary estimates of change in total surface water storage (ΔTWS) from the GRACE satellite project appear to close terrestrial water budgets. In humid regions, ET_EB products exhibit higher long-term bias, and the covariability of ET_EB and ET_WB decreases significantly. Several factors related to either failure of ET_WB, such as errors in ΔTWS and precipitation, or failure of ET_EB, such as treatment of snowfall and horizontal heat advection, explain some of these discrepancies. These results mirror and build on conclusions from other studies: on interannual time scales, ΔTWS and error in precipitation estimates are nonnegligible uncertainties in ET estimates based on a terrestrial water budget, and this confounds their comparison to energy balance ET models. However, there is also evidence that in at least some regions, climate and landscape features may also influence the accuracy and long-term bias of ET estimates from energy balance models, and these potential errors should be considered when using these gridded products in hydrologic applications.