IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v97y2010i2p300-308.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prediction of annual reference evapotranspiration using climatic data

Author

Listed:
  • Li, Yi
  • Horton, Robert
  • Ren, Tusheng
  • Chen, Chunyan

Abstract

It is important to determine how well ETo can be estimated from easily observed Epan (free water evaporation measured by a pan) measurements and the other climatic data. Our objectives are to predict annual ETo with Epan data (with a calibrated kp (=ETo/Epan)) and with a 4-variable regression function method. The significance of the trends of Epan, ETo and kp series were detected. The whole data series (ETo, Epan, mean temperature, sunlight hours, relative humidity and wind speed) were divided into the early (L-5) years for calibrating kp and coefficients of a 4-variable function and the last 5 years for predicting ETo. From the results, significance of series trends decreased when using the modified Mann-Kendall (MMK) test compared to the Mann-Kendall (MK) method. For ETo, five out of six sites showed significant trends according to the MK statistic Z, and two sites were significant in trend combining with the MMK statistic Z*(j). For Epan, two sites were significant in trends according to Z, and zero sites were significant in trends combining with Z*(j). For kp, two sites were significant in trends according to Z, and no sites were significant in trends combining with Z*(j). Thus the calibrated kp can be treated as a constant when using the Epan method. The predicted annual ETo using the Epan and the multi-variable methods showed generally good agreements with the estimated annual ETo (based on monthly PM equation) with low relative errors (RE). Mean ETo values were well predicted by both methods. When using Epan method, RE ranged from -14.7 to -3.3% for Urumqi, from 17.6 to 21.7% for Xning, from 1.8 to 10.7% for Lanzhou, from 4.7 to 17.0% for Huhehaote, from -7.4 to 9.1% for Beijing, and from -8.6 to 2.3% for Changchun. RE of predicting annual ETo with 4-variable regression function were even lower compared to Epan method. The main error source of the predictions came from the deviation between calibrated kp and the actual kp of the predicted years when using Epan method and from random fluctuations of climatic data when using the 4-varible regression function. In conclusion, the MMK test was a robust method for trend detection because it considered serial time dependence. Insignificant trend of the kp series supports the choice of a mean value as the calibrated kp and for ETo predictions. The Epan method is recommended for prediction of annual ETo.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Yi & Horton, Robert & Ren, Tusheng & Chen, Chunyan, 2010. "Prediction of annual reference evapotranspiration using climatic data," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 300-308, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:97:y:2010:i:2:p:300-308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-3774(09)00291-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexandris, S. & Kerkides, P. & Liakatas, A., 2006. "Daily reference evapotranspiration estimates by the "Copais" approach," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 371-386, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hossein Tabari & Jaefar Nikbakht & P. Hosseinzadeh Talaee, 2012. "Identification of Trend in Reference Evapotranspiration Series with Serial Dependence in Iran," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 26(8), pages 2219-2232, June.
    2. Zhang, Baoqing & Wu, Pute & Zhao, Xining & Wang, Yubao & Wang, Jiawen & Shi, Yinguang, 2012. "Drought variation trends in different subregions of the Chinese Loess Plateau over the past four decades," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 167-177.
    3. Chen, Xinguo & Li, Yi & Yao, Ning & Liu, De Li & Javed, Tehseen & Liu, Chuncheng & Liu, Fenggui, 2020. "Impacts of multi-timescale SPEI and SMDI variations on winter wheat yields," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shiri, Jalal, 2017. "Evaluation of FAO56-PM, empirical, semi-empirical and gene expression programming approaches for estimating daily reference evapotranspiration in hyper-arid regions of Iran," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 101-114.
    2. Behnam Ababaei, 2014. "Are Weather Generators Robust Tools to Study Daily Reference Evapotranspiration and Irrigation Requirement?," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 28(4), pages 915-932, March.
    3. Xiang, Keyu & Li, Yi & Horton, Robert & Feng, Hao, 2020. "Similarity and difference of potential evapotranspiration and reference crop evapotranspiration – a review," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    4. Chatzithomas, C.D. & Alexandris, S.G., 2015. "Solar radiation and relative humidity based, empirical method, to estimate hourly reference evapotranspiration," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 188-197.
    5. Traore, Seydou & Wang, Yu-Min & Kerh, Tienfuan, 2010. "Artificial neural network for modeling reference evapotranspiration complex process in Sudano-Sahelian zone," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(5), pages 707-714, May.
    6. Alexandris, Stavros & Proutsos, Nikolaos, 2020. "How significant is the effect of the surface characteristics on the Reference Evapotranspiration estimates?," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:97:y:2010:i:2:p:300-308. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.