Towards a rational definition of potential evaporation

Abstract. The concept of potential evaporation is defined on the basis of the following criteria: (i) it must establish an upper limit to the evaporation process in a given environment (the term "environment" including meteorological and surface conditions), and (ii) this upper limit must be readily calculated from measured input data. It is shown that this upper limit is perfectly defined and is given by the Penman equation, applied with the corresponding meteorological data (incoming radiation and air characteristics measured at a reference height) and the appropriate surface characteristics (albedo, roughness length, soil heat flux). Since each surface has its own potential evaporation, a function of its own surface characteristics, it is useful to define a reference potential evaporation as a short green grass completely shading the ground.
Although the potential evaporation from a given surface is readily calculated from the Penman equation, its physical significance or interpretation is not so straightforward, because it represents only an idealized situation, not a real one. Potential evaporation is the evaporation from this surface, when saturated and extensive enough to obviate any effect of local advection, under the same meteorological conditions. Due to the feedback effects of evaporation on air characteristics, it does not represent the "real" evaporation (i.e. the evaporation which could be physically observed in the real world) from such an extensive saturated surface in these given meteorological conditions (if this saturated surface were substituted for an unsaturated one previously existing). From a rigorous standpoint, this calculated potential evaporation is not physically observable. Nevertheless, an approximate representation can be given by the evaporation from a limited saturated area, the dimension of which depends on the height of measurement of the air characteristics used as input in the Penman equation. If they are taken at a height of 2 m (the height of the meteorological observations), the dimension of the saturated surface in the direction of the wind ranges roughly from 50 to 200 m for a short green grass completely shading the ground.