Spatial variability of mean daily estimates of actual evaporation from remotely sensed imagery and surface reference data

Armstrong, Robert N.; Pomeroy, John W.; Martz, Lawrence W.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-4891-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 12

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 4891–4907, 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-4891-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue: Understanding and predicting Earth system and hydrological...

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 4891–4907, 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-4891-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 12

Research article 29 Nov 2019

Research article | 29 Nov 2019

Spatial variability of mean daily estimates of actual evaporation from remotely sensed imagery and surface reference data

Robert N. Armstrong et al.

Data sets

Evaporation modelling gridded data and meteorological station data for a case study at a rolling prairie landscape at St. Denis National Wildlife Area, Saskatchewan, Canada R. Armstrong, J. Pomeroy, and M. Lawrence https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0192

Short summary

Digital and thermal images taken near midday were used to scale daily point observations of key factors driving actual-evaporation estimates across a complex Canadian Prairie landscape. Point estimates of actual evaporation agreed well with observed values via eddy covariance. Impacts of spatial variations on areal estimates were minor, and no covariance was found between model parameters driving the energy term. The methods can be applied further to improve land surface parameterisations.