Evaluation of daily crop reference evapotranspiration and sensitivity analysis of FAO Penman-Monteith equation using ERA5-Land reanalysis database in Sicily, Italy

Matteo Ippolito, Dario De Caro, Marcella Cannarozzo, Giuseppe Provenzano and Giuseppe Ciraolo

Agricultural Water Management, 2024, vol. 295, issue C

Abstract: Crop evapotranspiration (ET) is one of the most important components in many hydrological processes. The crop reference evapotranspiration (ETo) represents the atmospheric water demand in each crop type, development stage, and management practices. The Penman-Monteith equation in the version suggested by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO56-PM), is one of the most used methods to estimate ETo. In several regions of the world, meteorological observations are not always available. The most recent reanalysis database ERA5-Land, released in 2019, can be useful to overcome this limit. The database provides, with a spatial grid of 0.1° latitude and 0.1° longitude, several hourly climate data such as air temperature, dew point temperature, solar radiation, and wind speed components all at 2.0 m above the soil surface, except wind speed components at 10 m, useful to apply the FAO56-PM equation. The objective of this research is to assess the quality of ERA5-Land climate variables data to estimate daily ETo in Sicily, Italy. The effect of the weather station’s elevation associated with the statistical indicators was also evaluated to verify how the morphology affects the measurements. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of the FAO56-PM equation was carried out to identify which climate variables have the most influence on the ETo estimation. For the period 2006–2015, the comparison between air temperature, global solar radiation, wind speed, and relative air humidity, measured from 39 ground weather stations in Sicily, and ERA5-Land was carried out and then, through FAO56-PM equation daily ETo values were estimated using both databases. The statistical indicators Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Bias Error (MBE) confirm the possibility of considering the ERA5-Land a suitable solution to estimate ETo. The sensitivity analysis showed that good ETo estimation depends mainly on the accuracy of the relative air humidity and air temperature data.

Keywords: Ground climate data; Sensitivity coefficient; Atmospheric water demand; Mediterranean climatic zone; SIAS climate stations network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377424000672
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:295:y:2024:i:c:s0378377424000672

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2024.108732

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().