Using long-term water balances to parameterize surface conductances and calculate evaporation at 0.05°spatial resolution

Abstract

Evaporation from the land surface, averaged over successive 8 day intervals and at 0.05° (∼5 km) spatial resolution, was calculated using the Penman-Monteith (PM) energy balance equation, gridded meteorology, and a simple biophysical model for surface conductance. This conductance is a function of evaporation from the soil surface, leaf area index, absorbed photosynthetically active radiation, atmospheric water vapor pressure deficit, and maximum stomatal conductance (gsx). The novelty of this paper is the use of a "Budyko-curve" hydrometeorological model to estimate mean annual evaporation rates and hence a unique value of gsx for each grid cell across the Australian continent. First, the h..