Diagnosing and predicting evaporation through satellite-based surface energy balance (SEB) and land surface models (LSMs) is challenging due to the non-linear responses of aerodynamic (ga) and stomatal conductance (gcs) to the coalition of soil and atmospheric drought. Despite a soaring popularity in refining gcs formulation in the LSMs by introducing a link between soil-plant hydraulics and gcs, the utility of gcs has been surprisingly overlooked in SEB models due to the overriding emphasis on eliminating ga uncertainties and the lack of coordination between these two different modeling communities. Therefore, a persistent challenge is to understand the reasons for divergent evaporation estimates from different models during strong soil-atmospheric drought. Here we present a virtual reality experiment over two contrasting European forest sites to understand the apparent sensitivity of the two critical conductances and evaporative fluxes to a water-stress factor (b-factor) in conjunction with land surface temperature (soil drought proxy) and vapor pressure deficit (atmospheric drought proxy) by using a non-parametric diagnostic model (Surface Temperature Initiated Closure, STIC1.2) and a prognostic model (Community Land Model, CLM5.0). Results revealed the b-factor and different functional forms of the two conductances to be a significant predictor of divergent response of the conductances to soil and atmospheric drought, which subsequently propagated in the evaporative flux estimates between STIC1.2 and CLM5.0. This analysis reaffirms the need for consensus on theory and models that capture the sensitivity of the biophysical conductances to the complex coalition of soil and atmospheric drought for better evaporation prediction.