Regionalization of the Hargreaves Coefficient for the Assessment of Distributed Reference Evapotranspiration in Southern Italy
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 5
Abstract
The Hargreaves equation (HE) is the most reliable and diffused temperature-based method for the estimate of the reference crop evapotranspiration in areas with limited meteorological data. Several studies proposed its further enhancement by adopting correction equations for recalibrating its parameters, specifically the empirical Hargreaves coefficient, . In this paper, a local recalibration for southern Italy is shown, taking as a reference the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Penman-Monteith (PM) equation applied over 137 (34 coastal and 103 inland) meteorological stations, allowing the estimation of 357,920 daily values in the period 1994–2011. Through a regression analysis, the adjusted Hargreaves coefficients (AHC), minimizing the errors for each individual station between the HE and the FAO Penman-Monteith equation, and providing better performances than the original HE applied at the monthly scale, were correlated to the available daily meteorological data; reliable regionalization equations of the AHCs were found determined by either the average daily temperature range or the ratio between the average daily temperature and , with similar coefficients to analogous relationships proposed in the literature. Specifically, the dependent model proved to be very reliable over the whole study area for all climate types, from the shore up to 1,928 m. The improvement in the performances of the regional model with respect to the original HE was on average 22%, and it also proved able to simulate the yearly cumulative evolution in several meteorological stations. The strength of the model was positively tested through a jackknife resampling procedure and a sensitivity analysis, taking into account possible trends for the average daily temperature range.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Centro Agrometeorologico Regionale for data from Campania, the Agenzia Lucana di Sviluppo e Innovazione in Agricoltura (ALSIA) for data from Basilicata, the Servizio Agrometeorologico Regionale (AssoCoDiPuglia) for data from Apulia, the Centro Funzionale Multirischi (ARPACAL) for data from Calabria, and Dr. L. Pasotti from the Servizio Informativo Agrometeorologico (SIAS) for the data from Sicily. The research was partly funded through a grant provided by the program Borse Post-doc all’estero UniCal, POR Calabria FSE 2007/2013, Axis 4 Capitale umano, Operative objective M.2. The authors also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 5 • May 2013
Pages: 349 - 362
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 23, 2011
Accepted: Sep 19, 2012
Published online: Sep 22, 2012
Published in print: May 1, 2013
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