Reconstructing climate trends adds skills to seasonal reference crop evapotranspiration forecasting

Abstract

Evapotranspiration plays an important role in the terrestrial water cycle. Reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo) has been widely used to estimate water transfer from vegetation surface to the atmosphere. Seasonal ETo forecasting provides valuable information for effective water resource management and planning. Climate forecasts from general circulation models (GCMs) have been increasingly used to produce seasonal ETo forecasts. Statistical calibration plays a critical role in correcting bias and dispersion errors in GCM-based ETo forecasts. However, time-dependent errors resulting from GCM misrepresentations of climate trends have not been explicitly corrected in ETo forecast calibrations..