互补关系最初以陆面蒸发对大气蒸发能力的线性反馈作用为基础，指能量输入一定的情况下，陆面蒸发量与大气蒸发能力随陆面水分供应条件变化发生的大小相等、方向相反的“互补”变化，基于互补关系能够利用常规气象数据进行实际蒸发量的估算。目前互补关系被拓展为描述陆面蒸发与大气蒸发能力之间非线性相互作用规律的一种本构关系，提出了3种广义非线性蒸发互补关系：韩松俊等的S型函数公式（2012年），Brutsaert的多项式公式（2015年）以及Crago和Szilagyi在多项式公式基础上提出的对自变量进行动态标度的方法（2016年）。3种非线性互补关系采用不同的边界条件，对陆面水分条件的影响具有不同的处理思路，反映了对陆面蒸发与大气蒸发能力之间相互作用规律的不同认识。通过梳理广义非线性互补关系的发展历程和争论，分析争论背后认识和研究思路的差异，以期为蒸发研究的发展提供参考。

The complementary relationship of evaporation was first based on the linear feedbacks of land surface evaporation on the atmospheric evaporative demand. Given that the water availability of the land surface changes with constant available energy， it means that the land surface evaporation and the atmospheric evaporative demand change complementarily with equal amount yet opposite directions. Actual evaporation can be estimated with routinely measured meteorological variables based on the complementary relationship. At present， the complementary relationship is generalized to a constitutive relationship describing the nonlinear interactions between the land surface evaporation and the atmospheric evaporative demand. Three generalized nonlinear complementary relationships were proposed： the sigmoid formulation of Han et al. （2012）， the polynomial formulation of Brutsaert （2015）， and the rescaling approach on the independent variable of the polynomial formulation of Crago and Szilagyi （2016）. The three nonlinear complementary relationships adopt different boundary conditions， and employ different approaches to deal with the influences of the land surface water availability， reflecting different understandings on the interactions between the land surface evaporation and the atmospheric evaporative demand. This review summarizes the historical development of the generalized nonlinear complementary relationships with a specific focus on their controversies， and analyzes the differences of the understandings and research approaches， so as to provide a reference for the development of evaporation research.