Intra-annual and multi-decadal variations in the Earth's climate are to a large extent driven by periodic oscillations in the coupled state of atmosphere and ocean. Because changes in climate impact terrestrial ecosystems, these ocean-atmospheric oscillations are expected to influence land evaporation as well. In this study, we investigate the control of ocean-atmospheric oscillations over global terrestrial evaporation using a simple learning method and a large dataset of satellite-based observations of climatic variables. Our results show that the simple learning method is able to quantify this control and allows for a better understanding of the link between ocean-atmosphere dynamics and terrestrial bio-geochemical cycles. Finally, our approach may help improve the prediction of changes in the global water cycle.