ABSTRACTThis study analyses variability and trends of atmospheric evaporative demand (AED) across Uruguay in the past four decades. Changes were assessed using pan evaporation measurements from 10 meteorological stations and compared to PenPan model calculations, which is a physically based model that employs meteorological data as input. Results demonstrate a high agreement between the observed AED and those estimated from the PenPan model. Both observations and model estimations agree on a high interannual variability in AED, though being statistically insignificant (p > 0.05) at seasonal and annual scales. Given that AED shows high sensitivity to changes in relative humidity and sunshine duration, as a surrogate of solar radiation, the lack of significant trends in the AED observations and estimations over Uruguay can be linked to the insignificant trend found for these climate variables for the period from 1973 to 2014. This is the first study that reports Pan evaporation trends for this part of the world, helping to infill gaps for mid‐latitude Southern Hemisphere areas, which are poorly represented in Pan evaporation trends.