Surface Renewal Application for Estimating Evapotranspiration: A Review

Abstract

The estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) is essential for meteorological modeling of surface exchange processes, as well as for the agricultural practice of irrigation management. Hitherto, a number of methods for estimation of ET at different temporal scales and climatic conditions are constantly under investigation and improvement. One of these methods is surface renewal (SR). Therefore, the premise of this review is to present recent developments and applications of SR for ET measurements. The SR method is based on estimating the turbulent exchange of sensible heat flux between plant canopy and atmosphere caused by the instantaneous replacement of air parcels in contact with the surface. Additional measurements of net radiation and soil heat flux facilitate extracting ET using the shortened energy balance equation. The challenge, however, is the calibration of SR results against direct sensible heat flux measurements. For the classical SR method, only air temperature measured at high frequency is required. In addition, a new model suggests that the SR method could be exempted from calibration by measuring additional micrometeorological variables. However, further improvement of the SR method is required to provide improved results in the future.