First, some concepts of evapotranspiration based on Penman's method, and the results reported about the complementary method are summarised. Secondly, applicability of the complementary method to the estimation of watershed evapotranspiration is examined. The Brutsaert-Stricker method is modified by introducing the advection term, and multipling the dryness index to the aerodynamic term, and used in the examination. Evapotranspiration of the Tatsunokuchi watershed in Okayama prefecture was estimated by the complementary method and the water budget method using the data collected in the watershed. The results show that the estimated values of monthly evapotranspiration by the two methods are generally in agreement. But, the complementary method could not estimate the evapotranspiration decrease during the drought at the summer season of 1973 and 1978. It is suggested that by modifying the estimation method of net radiation to consider the dryness would increase the accuracy of the complementry method. The estimation results of the 5 experimental watersheds show that the complementary method used in this paper gives the most accurate estimate of average annual evapotranspiration as compared to the presently used method.
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