Estimation of potential evapotranspiration from NOAA-AVHRR satellite

Potential evapotranspiration is widely used by farmers and hydrologists as a measure for determining actual evapotranspiration for irrigation scheduling, drought monitoring, hydrologic modeling and regional water balance studies. In the present study a comprehensive methodology has been developed for estimating reference crop (Grass) ET using Penman-Monteith combination equation from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) for Texas at a spatial resolution of 1 km2. As part of this study 282 NOAA-14, AVHRR satellite images acquired between May 1999 to August 2000 and weather data measured at several weather stations across Texas were analyzed. Regression relationships were developed to calculate the weather parameters maximum air temperature and vapor pressure deficit from satellite's infrared surface temperature. The regression relationships were validated using independent weather station observations. The root mean square error (RMSE) of daily ET calculated using these weather parameter estimates was within 1.1 mm day-1 when compared to ET derived from ground-based weather station measurements of climatic variables.

Estimation of potential evapotranspiration from NOAA-AVHRR satellite Academic Article