Análise comparativa da evapotranspiração de referência estimada por diferentes métodos no município de limoeiro do norte, Ceará

Abstract

This work was aimed at selecting the best methods to estimate the reference evapotranspiration in comparison with the equation of Penman-Monteith-FAO. The methods of evapotranspiration estimation compared were: Jensen-Haise, Ivanov, Linacre, Hargreaves-Samani and Makkink. The analyzed data came from the automatic weather station belonging to the Unidade de Ensino e Pesquisa (Teaching and Research Unit) of the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Ceará - Campus Limoeiro do Norte, Ceará, comprising the period (in 2007) from January 1st to December. The analysis was based on daily data, monthly data and by ten-day interval data using regression analysis and evaluating the Hoppinks (2002) correlation coefficient, the Willmott (et al., 1985) indexes and the Sentelhas and Campbell (1997) performance index . The results demonstrated that the method of Ivanov gave the best performance in the daily schedule, that in the ten-day schedule the methods of Ivanov and Hargreaves-Samani showed the best performance, and that in the monthly schedule, the methods of Linacre, Hargreaves-Samani and Ivanov showed the best performance. Despite the good performance of the Ivanov method with all three time schedules, we would advise the use of the Hargreaves-Samani method, in ten-day and monthly schedules, due to its greater ease of data collection and practicality in the calculation of reference evapotranspiration.