Triple collocation validates CONUS-wide evapotranspiration inferred from atmospheric conditions

McCormick, Erica L.; Sanders, Lillian E.; McColl, Kaighin A.; Konings, Alexandra G.

doi:10.5194/hess-30-2417-2026

Articles | Volume 30, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-2417-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-2417-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 30, issue 8

Research article

|

28 Apr 2026

Research article |

| 28 Apr 2026

Triple collocation validates CONUS-wide evapotranspiration inferred from atmospheric conditions

Erica L. McCormick, Lillian E. Sanders, Kaighin A. McColl, and Alexandra G. Konings

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-2417-2026-supplement

Data sets

Daily surface flux equilibrium (SFE) ET across CONUS Erica L. McCormick, Lillian E. Sanders, Kaighin A. McColl, Alexandra G. Konings https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17903676

Model code and software

Code for "Triple collocation validates CONUS-wide evapotranspiration inferred from atmospheric conditions" Erica L. McCormick, Lillian E. Sanders, Kaighin A. McColl, Alexandra G. Konings https://github.com/erica-mccormick/sfe_et_and_triple_collocation

Short summary

We estimate daily evapotranspiration (ET) across the United States using the ‘surface flux equilibrium’ approach, which assumes that the balance of temperature and humidity in the atmosphere reflects recent ET on land. Using triple collocation, we compare our estimates to three other ET datasets and find that the surface flux equilibrium ET method performs well. Surface flux equilibrium ET may therefore be useful for hydrologic studies where simple, parameter-free ET estimates are advantageous.