Using remote sensed actual evaporation to improve hydrological models

In hydrological models evaporation is often still quite uncertain. Potential evaporation is used as input, but the modelling of plant stresses is not always accurate enough to describe the behaviour in reality. In situ measured actual evaporation data is rare, and doing measurements is time consuming and expensive. With the advance of satellite...

Evaporation in conceptual rainfall-runoff models: Testing model realism using remotely sensed evaporation

The procedure to determine evaporation in hydrological models is considered to be unsatisfactory by some researchers; ‘too’ accurate by others. In this procedure catchment scale evaporation is related to some form of potential evaporation, determined with point scale meteorological data. The main criticism is that the potential evaporation is...

A new view on the hydrological cycle over continents

Where does precipitation come from? It is not easy to answer this question because of the complex and energy-intensive processes that bring moisture to a certain location and cause moisture to precipitate highly heterogeneously in space and variable over time. Part of the precipitation comes from so-called “moisture recycling”, which is moisture...

Partitioning of evaporation fluxes in summer and winter using stable isotope approach

Irrigation is the largest user of fresh water in the world. Unfortunately a large part of irrigation is unsustainable and inefficiently causing water scarcity with sometimes terrible effects on the water cycle, ecology, economy and food production. The key in determining the efficiency of irrigation is to investigate how much irrigation water is...