The impact of the interannual variability （IAV） of vegetation on the IAV of evapotranspiration is investigated with the Community Land Model （CLM3.0） and modified Dynamic Global Vegetation Model （DGVM）. Two sets of 50-year off-line simulations are used in this study. The simulations begin with the same initial surface-water and heat states and are driven by the same atmospheric forcing data. The vegetation exhibits interannual variability in one simulation but not in the other simulation. However, the climatological means for the vegetation are the same. The IAV of the 50-year annual total evapotranspiration and its three partitions （ground evaporation, canopy evaporation, and transpiration） are analyzed. The global distribution of the evapotranspiration IAV and the statistics of evapotranspiration and its components in different ecosystems show that the IAV of ground evaporation is generally large in areas dominated by grass and deciduous trees, whereas the IAV of canopy evaporation and transpiration is large in areas dominated by bare soil and shrubs. For ground evaporation, canopy evaporation, and transpiration, the changes in IAV are larger than the mean state over most grasslands and shrublands. The study of two sites with the same IAV in the leaf area index （LAI） shows that the component with the smaller contribution to the total evapotranspiration is more sensitive to the IAV of vegetation. The IAV of the three components of evapotranspiration increases with the IAV of the fractional coverage （FC） and the LAI. The ground evaporation IAV shows the greatest increase, whereas the canopy evaporation shows the smallest increase.