Abstract
Reference evapotranspiration (ETO) estimation is a prerequisite for the estimation of evapotranspiration rates of different crops. There is global consensus on the consistency of the FAO-56 Penman–Monteith (FAO-56 PM) method, and it has lately become the first-choice for the estimation of ETO, but despite its consistent performance, other methods continue to be popular for their simple structure and data requirement, more so in field practice. In this study, regression models were developed for predicting monthly ETO using monthly averages of minimum temperature (Tmin), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (WS), and sunshine hours (SSH) for three stations in the temperate Kashmir Valley. The models are based on the ETO data generated using the FAO-56 PM method. The weather data required for the analysis were for a period of 20 years. The models were evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R2) and residual analysis. R2 values for the developed models were greater than 0.96. In addition to the ETO estimation, the developed models may also be used for trend evaluation in the ETO data in climatologically similar regions. In this study, for the cases of very limited data availability where the FAO-56 PM equation cannot be used, the Hargreaves and Samani (HAR) equation, which only uses temperature as an input, was calibrated for each station using linear regression between FAO-56 PM ETO and HAR ETO.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments are due to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Government of India, for providing the Doctoral Fellowship to the author, IMD Pune, for providing the meteorological data and to NIT Srinagar for providing space for computational analysis.
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The research is funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Government of India.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from IMD PUNE. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are available from the authors with the permission of IMD PUNE.
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Mohsin, S., Lone, M.A. Modeling of reference evapotranspiration for temperate Kashmir Valley using linear regression. Model. Earth Syst. Environ. 7, 495–502 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-020-00921-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-020-00921-8