EVALUATION OF EVAPORATION MODELS BASED ON CLIMATE FACTORS

Evaporation is a complex process and plays a critical role in water resources management. Evaporation for the Nath Sagar Reservoir located in Marathwada Region of Maharashtra is studied in this paper. Four evaporation models, Penman, Priestly-Taylor, De Bruin, and Harbeck were evaluated to predict the evaporation, metrological data were the inputs to the model. Observed daily evaporation and statistical tests were conducted to check the model accuracy. Root mean square error (RMSE), Mean bias Error (MBE) and coefficient of determination (R2) were employed to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed model. The study shows the De Bruins model to be the best model for evaporation prediction with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.92 and the root mean square value (RMSE) of 0.865and the mean bias error (MBE) of -0.35 for this Nath Sagar Reservoir of Maharashtra.