Bouchet's complementary relationship and the Budyko hypothesis are two classic frameworks that are inter-connected. To systematically investigate the connections between the two frameworks, we analyze precipitation, pan evaporation, and potential evaporation data at 259 weather stations across the United States. The precipitation and pan evaporation data are from field measurement and the potential evaporation data are collected from a remote-sensing dataset. We use pan evaporation to represent “apparent” potential evaporation, which is different from potential evaporation. With these data, we study the correlations between precipitation and potential evaporation, and between precipitation and “apparent” potential evaporation. The results show that 93% of the study's weather stations exhibit a negative correlation between precipitation and “apparent” potential evaporation. Also, the aggregated data cloud of precipitation vs. “apparent” potential evaporation with 5312 warm-season data points from 259 weather stations shows a negative trend in which “apparent” potential evaporation decreases with increasing precipitation. On the other hand, no significant correlation is found in the data cloud of precipitation vs. potential evaporation, indicating that precipitation and potential evaporation are independent. We combine a Budyko-type expression, the Turc–Pike equation, with Bouchet's complementary relationship to derive upper and lower Bouchet–Budyko curves, which display a complementary relationship between “apparent” potential evaporation and actual evaporation. The observed warm-season data follow the trend of the Bouchet–Budyko curves. Our study shows the consistency between Budyko's framework and Bouchet's complementary relationship, with the distinction between potential evaporation and “apparent” potential evaporation. The formulated complementary relationship can be used in quantitative modeling practices.
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