Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Evapotranspiration (ET) is one of the basic components of the hydrologic cycle and is essential for estimating irrigation water requirements. In this study, artificial neural network (ANN) models for reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0) estimation were developed on a monthly basis (May～October). The models were trained and tested for Suwon, Korea. Four climate factors, daily maximum temperature (Tmax), daily minimum temperature (Tmin), rainfall (R), and solar radiation (S) were used as the input parameters of the models. The target values of the models were calculated using Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Penman-Monteith equation. Future climate data were generated using LARS-WG (Long Ashton Research Station-Weather Generator), stochastic weather generator, based on HadCM3 (Hadley Centre Coupled Model, ver.3) A1B scenario. The evapotranspirations were 549.7 mm/yr in baseline period (1973-2008), 558.1 mm/yr in 2011-2030, 593.0 mm/yr in 2046-2065, and 641.1 mm/yr in 2080- 2099. The results showed that the ANN models achieved good performances in estimating future reference crop evapotranspiration.