This study assesses the simulations of global-scale evapotranspiration from the second Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP-2) within a global water budget framework. The scatter in the GSWP-2 global evapotranspiration estimates from various land surface models can constrain the global annual water budget fluxes to within 62.5% and, by using estimates of global precipitation, the residual ocean evaporation estimate falls within the range of other independently derived bulk estimates. The GSWP-2 scatter, however, cannot entirely explain the imbalance of the annual fluxes from a modern-era, observationally based global water budget assessment. Inconsistencies in the magnitude and timing of seasonal variations between the global water budget terms are also found. Intermodel inconsistencies in evapotranspiration are largest for highlatitude interannual variability as well as for interseasonal variations in the tropics, and analyses with fieldscale data also highlight model disparity at estimating evapotranspiration in high-latitude regions. Analyses of the sensitivity simulations that replace uncertain forcings (i.e., radiation, precipitation, and meteorological variables) indicate that global (land) evapotranspiration is slightly more sensitive to precipitation than net radiation perturbations, and the majority of the GSWP-2 models, at a global scale, fall in a marginally moisture-limited evaporative condition. Lastly, the range of global evapotranspiration estimates among the models is larger than any bias caused by uncertainties in the GSWP-2 atmospheric forcing, indicating that model structure plays a more important role toward improving global land evaporation estimates (as opposed to improved atmospheric forcing).

© 2009 AMS