Reply to Comment on Potential Evaporation and the Complementary Relationship by Jozsef Szilagyi

We appreciate Dr Szilagyi's interest in our article on potential evaporation and the complementary relationship (CR). For his first concern on the assumption of constant net radiation versus constant net solar radiation in the estimation of potential evaporation, here we show that the constant net solar radiation condition is more universally applicable both in observations and from a theoretical perspective. For his second concern on the CR model calibration, we clarify herein that no calibrations were used in our applications of the various CR models. Instead, the parameter values were all directly taken from previous studies to ensure a fair and practically meaningful inter-model comparison.

Automated summary

We appreciate Dr Szilagyi's interest and concerns. We argue that the assumption of constant net solar radiation is more universally applicable for estimating potential evaporation. Furthermore, we clarify that no calibrations were used in our applications of the various CR models, ensuring a fair and meaningful inter-model comparison.