Evapotranspiration

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Calculation[edit]

Thornthwaite Mather method[edit]

The Thornthwaite Mather method of calculating water balance[1] is recommended within the 2003 Ontario Stormwater Management Planning and Design Manual. The original paper (linked below) provides the required calculations as a series of lookup tables. The following equations are derived from these, and are widely documented elsewhere e.g.<ref>Sellinger,C.E. Computer Program for Estimating Evapotranspiration using the Thornthwaite Method . We are in the process of writing an xls tool to semi-automate these; please feel free request a draft copy, or to contribute your own How to contribute.

Step 1. Calculate the monthly heat index (i): where: T = mean monthly temperature.

Step 2. Calculate the annual heat index (I):

Step 3. Calculate an uncorrected Potential Evapotranspiration (PETuncorrected):

where: α = 6.75 x 10-7 I3 - 7.71 x 10-5 I2+ 0.0179 I + 0.49

Step 4. A monthly correction is then applied to account for varying daylight hours and number of days in a month, to find the corrected potential evapotranspiration (PET):

Example[edit]

For the town of Richmond Hill (Lat = 43.87)
For monthly calculations, data can be found in Environment Canada Climate Normals

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
Declination (rad) - 0.372 - 0.232 - 0.035 0.171 0.330 0.407 0.372 0.239 0.052 - 0.157 - 0.325 - 0.407
Day length (hr) 9 10 12 13 15 15 15 14 12 11 9 9
Temperature (°C) - 6.20 - 4.90 - 0.30 6.90 13.30 18.70 21.40 20.30 15.90 9.10 3.10 - 2.70
Monthly heat index, i 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.63 4.40 7.37 9.04 8.34 5.76 2.48 0.48 0.00
PET (mm, uncorrected) 0.00 0.00 0.00 29.91 62.44 91.50 106.44 100.33 76.28 40.80 12.19 0.00
days in month 31 28 31 30 31 30 31 31 30 31 30 31
Corrected PET (mm) 0.0 0.0 0.0 33.1 78.3 116.4 136.9 119.3 78.7 38.1 9.6 0.0

  1. Thornthwaite, C. W., and Mather, J. R., Instructions and Tables for Computing Potential Evapotranspiration and the Water Balance, Drexel Institute of Technology, Laboratory of Climatology, 1957. Thornthwaite1957