Evaluating three evapotranspiration methods in the SLURP macroscale hydrological model

✍ Scribed by Alan G. Barr; G. W. Kite; R. Granger; C. Smith

• Book ID: 101282430
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 377 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6087
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1085(19971030)11:13<1685::aid-hyp599>3.0.co;2-t

✦ Synopsis

Hydrological models simulate the land phase component of the global water cycle and provide a mechanism for evaluating the eects of climatic variation and change on water resources. Evapotranspiration (ET) is a critical process within such models. This study evaluates three dierent methods for estimating ET in the simple lumped reservoir parametric model (SLURP), over a ®ve-year period in the Kootenay Basin of eastern British Columbia. The three ET methods were the Morton implementation of the Bouchet complementary relationship, the Granger modi®cation of Penman's method and the Spittlehouse energy-limited versus soil moisture-limited method. We evaluated the three ET methods indirectly, based on the ability of the SLURP hydrological model to simulate daily stream ¯ow over several annual cycles. Although the ET methods aected simulated stream ¯ow dierently, the Spittlehouse method had more physical signi®cance and gave better agreement between simulated and recorded stream ¯ows. The results showed that using an ET method that included a soil moisture limitation to ET produced a worthwhile improvement in hydrological performance.