Abstract

SEGURA-CASTRUITA, Miguel Ángel  and  ORTIZ-SOLORIO, Carlos Alberto. Modeling monthly potential evapotranspiration from maximum-minimum temperature and altitude. Tecnol. cienc. agua [online]. 2017, vol.8, n.3, pp.93-110. ISSN 2007-2422.  https://doi.org/10.24850/j-tyca-2017-03-06.

The estimate of potential evapotranspiration (PET) is important in the use of water for agricultural, environmental applications and other planning activities. The lack of data on meteorological stations (MS) of developing country leads to the search for simple models to estimate the PET. The objectives of this study were 1) to relate the variables maximum temperature (TX) and minimum temperature (TN) monthly, altitude (AL) and months (ME), with results of PET, obtained with the model Hargreaves and Samani (HS) in Mexico, using multivariate linear regressions and 2) to evaluate the accuracy of the models obtained with respect to HS and Penman (PN) PET. Monthly data from 81 MS (972 data) were used to derive the monthly PET with the HS model, the results were related to the TX, TN, AL and ME variables, to generate two models of multiple linear regression to calculate the monthly PET, one general model (PET g ) and one for each month model (PET m ), which were used to determine the PET in 12 MS, different to those initially used. The results show that PET g and PET m models have a greater that 75% predictive power; also, the PET m model has the smallest error and estimated values of potential evapotranspiration similar to those obtained with HS and PN. Therefore, the model PET m is a simple model that is applicable to Mexico, without using of latitude nor radiation.

Keywords : PET; water loss; evaporation; transpiration; Hargreaves and Samani; Penman; Penman-Monteith.