Evaluation of Meteorological Elements Used for Reference Evapotranspiration Calculation of FAO Penman-Monteith Model

The exact estimation of crop evapotranspiration containing reference or potential evapotranspiration is necessary for decision of crop water requirements. This study was carried out for the evaluation and application of various meteorological elements used for the calculation of reference evapotranspiration (RET) by FAO Penman- Monteith (PM) model. Meteorological elements including temperature, net radiation, soil heat flux, albedo, relative humidity, wind speed measured by meteorological instruments are required for RET calculation by FAO PM model. The average of albedo measured for crop growing period was 0.20, ranging from 0.12 to 0.23, and was slightly lower than 0.23. Determinant coefficients by measured albedo and green grass albedo were 0.97, 0.95 and standard errors were 0.74, 0.80 respectively. Usefulness of deductive regression models was admitted. To assess an influence of soil heat flux (G) on FAO PM, RET with G=0 was compared with RETs using G at 5cm soil depth (G5cm) and G at surface (G0cm). As the results, RET estimated by G=0 was well agreed with RET calculated by measured G. Therefore, estimated ne