Interpreting the complementary relationship in non‐humid environments based on the Budyko and Penman hypotheses

Abstract

[1] The Budyko, Bouchet, and Penman hypotheses together describe, using different formulae, the tight connections and feedbacks between water -energy balances and the landscape. The discrepancy between the Penman and Bouchet hypotheses is usually highlighted in non-humid regions. In this paper, using Fu's equation for annual water-energy balances at the catchment scale, which was derived phenomenologically and mathematically on the basis of the Budyko hypothesis, consistency among the three hypotheses is explained. In non-humid regions, change of actual evaporation is dominated by change in precipitation rather than potential evaporation, and the Bouchet complementary relationship between actual evaporation and potential evaporation comes about because actual evaporation and potential evaporation are correlated via precipitation. The annual water balances in 108 non-humid catchments of China have been examined as part of this study, and the results supported the complementary relationship. In humid regions, change in actual evaporation is controlled by change in potential evaporation rather than precipitation, and this is identical to the Penman hypothesis.

Comparison of future runoff projections using Budyko framework and global hydrologic model: conceptual simplicity vs process complexity

“…In general there have been two main branches of the Budyko equation (Choudhury, 1999;Fu, 1981). One of these is known as Fu's functional form, (Zhang L. et al, 2004;Potter et al, 2005;Yang D. et al, 2006Yang D. et al, , 2007.…”

Evaporation variability under climate warming in five reanalyses and its association with pan evaporation over China

“…Budyko [1974] presented a curve to describe the relation of AE, potential evaporation, and precipitation. Furthermore, Yang et al [2006] pointed out the relationship was complementary with water control and proportional with energy control. However, at present, these competing explanations remain controversial [Liu et al, 2004;Zhang et al, 2007].…”

Analysis of catchment evapotranspiration at different scales using bottom-up and top-down approaches

“…Considerable research has been performed on the www.intechopen.com Budyko curve (Fu, 1981;Milly, 1994;Choudhury, 1999;Wolock and McCabe, 1999;Zhang et al, 2004, Yang et al, 2008a through analyzing the interactions between climate, soils and vegetation in producing annual water balance. A simple water-energy balance equation (Yang et al, 2006 and based on the Budyko hypothesis (1974) has been used for predicting the long-term average evapotranspiration and the inter-annual variability of evapotranspiration. The top-down approach is usually used for explaining the observed responses at the watershed scale, in which one problem is how to generalize the catchment hydrological pattern and whether the hypothesis of conceptualization is reasonable.…”