Outline of Talk

IntroductionToolbox functionalityResultsConclusions and future development

The ETReference Evapotranspiration (Etr) MATLAB Toolbox is a computer based framework, which allows users to compute reference ET values from available forecast gridded weather

data produced by the National Weather service or from automated

climate stations.

Introduction

Application of Etr tool box using Gridded forecast climate data Forecast climate data allows calculation of

Etr for locations where automated climate station data are not available.

Forecast climate data can be used to fill in missing or error data from automated climate stations.

Forecast climate data are in a common format needed to calculate Etr for the entire United State to be used with Et calculated from satellite data.

Flow Chart of Tool. Model Runs on a daily time step.

FTP site to download hourly data

Gridded 5kmClimate forecast data at 2 m height including sky cover, air temp, wind speed, and dew point temp.

Data is downloaded, preprocessed and stored as flat file in a data base. The 5 km gridded data is downloaded every

day. The National Weather Service over writes

the file every day.Past data starting in 2005 to current date

on a 12 km grid is available from another fps site.

Reference Et calculated on daily climate variable. On a daily time step calculate:

Hourly data the using the dew point temperature and max. and min. air temperature to calculate vapor pressure deficit for each grid point

Average 24 hr wind speed for each grid point.

Clear sky daily solar radiation base on extrestial radiation calculation for each grid point.

Compute Etr from pre-processed weather data Eto = ∆ Rn + γ (6.43(1+0.536*U2) (es-ea)/ (∆+γ) L

Where: Eto= mm/day∆=slope of the saturated vapor pressure curve (kPa K-

1)Rn= net radiation (MJ m-2 day-1)γ = psychrometric constant (kPa K-1)U2= wind speed at 2 m (m s-1)

es = saturate vapor pressure (kPa)

ea = actual vapor pressure (kPa)L= latent heat of vaporization (MJ kg-1)

Results

Example of Google Earth output

Example of Calculate Daily Etr values.

Conclusions The Etr tool box currently runs on a server

that downloads and process the national weather service forecast data on a daily time step.

Matlab as a tool used in the Etr tool box was used to process large gridded forecast data for the United States using limited computer computation time (15 min).

Matlab allowed quick development of code for the Etr tool box compared to writing C++ processing code.

Future Development Convert links to data base files from hard

wire to a path file. Develop a graphical interface to look at

outputUse Google Earth to acquire elevation for a

given Lat. Long.