Statistical Analysis of Reference Evapotranspiration on the Tibetan Plateau
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 135, Issue 2
Abstract
Net radiation is an important and site-specific component to determine reference evapotranspiration . The empirical Angstrom coefficients for radiation estimation in the FAO56 Penman–Monteith (PM) equation were calibrated using observed daily solar radiation and actual sunshine duration on the Tibetan Plateau. The calibrated Angstom coefficients included annual coefficients for nine meteorological stations separately and aggregation of nine stations. The calibrated annual coefficients for each station separately were applied to estimate net radiation and further employed to estimate using the PM and the Priestley–Taylor (PT) equations on the Tibetan Plateau. Moreover, the Hargreaves (Harg) equation that requires only air temperature was also applied to estimate . Comparisons of three methods were conducted and the results showed that the PT method overestimated daily with respect to and the Harg method underestimated it at all meteorological stations. The PT method was more suitable for the study area in the absence of the parameters necessary for the calculation of . The Harg equation provides estimates when only air temperature is available and local calibration in the study can be applied on the Tibetan Plateau.
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Acknowledgments
The writers are grateful to the funded support of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC40405022), which made our work possible. The writers also thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 135 • Issue 2 • April 2009
Pages: 134 - 140
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 10, 2008
Accepted: Sep 4, 2008
Published online: Apr 1, 2009
Published in print: Apr 2009
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