CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

This study examines the uncertainties and the representations of anomalies of a set of evapotranspirationproducts over climatologically distinct regions of South America. The products, coming fromland surface models, reanalysis, and remote sensing, are chosen from sources that are readily available tothe community of users. The results show that the spatial patterns of maximum uncertainty differ amongmetrics, with dry regions showing maximum relative uncertainties of annual mean evapotranspiration, whileenergy-limited regions present maximum uncertainties in the representation of the annual cycle and monsoonregions in the representation of anomalous conditions. Furthermore, it is found that land surface modelsdriven by observed atmospheric fields detect meteorological and agricultural droughts in dry regionsunequivocally. The remote sensing products employed do not distinguish all agricultural droughts and thiscould be attributed to the forcing net radiation. The study also highlights important characteristics of individualdata sets and recommends users to include assessments of sensitivity to evapotranspiration data setsin their studies, depending on region and nature of study to be conducted.