Revised Coefficients for Priestley-Taylor and Makkink-Hansen Equations for Estimating Daily Reference Evapotranspiration
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 10
Abstract
Many applications require estimation of reference evapotranspiration () in areas where meteorological measurements are limited. Previous studies have shown that simple evapotranspiration models based on radiation and temperature perform relatively well in humid climates but underpredict in drier and windier climates. In this paper, estimates of based on existing simple models were compared with calculated with the more comprehensive Penman-Monteith equation using meteorological measurements at 106 locations in the contiguous United States for a range of climates. Results showed that the simpler models were closest to the more comprehensive model at sites where the annual mean relative humidity (RH) was approximately 70% and annual 2-m wind speed (U) was less than . Equations for adjusting the model coefficients were developed based on annual averages of RH [or vapor pressure deficit (VPD)] and to improve the performance of these models for drier and windier sites. Publicly available data sets of spatial distributions of annual RH and were used to estimate local coefficients for the contiguous United States. The new coefficients were tested with additional data from 22 sites, not used for coefficient development. At the test sites, the performance of both tested models improved with the revised coefficients. Depending on the model, 63–90% of the stations had within 10% of the Penman-Monteith for the growing season. The revised coefficients can be used to improve estimation of reference in data-limited applications such as remote sensing and distributed hydrologic modeling.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 10 • October 2013
Pages: 1289 - 1300
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 24, 2011
Accepted: Jun 27, 2012
Published online: Aug 4, 2012
Discussion open until: Jan 4, 2013
Published in print: Oct 1, 2013
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