被撤回的出版物: Comparative Evaluation of Radiation-Based Methods for Estimation of Potential Evapotranspiration (Retracted article. See vol. 22, 2017)

Evapotranspiration has a major role in agricultural and forest meteorology researches, hydrological cycle, irrigation scheduling, and water resources management. There are many methods to estimate the potential evapotranspiration including mass transfer, radiation, temperature, and pan evaporation-based methods. The present study aims to compare radiation-based methods to determine the best method under different weather conditions. The results discussed in this paper are from the data collected in the study area, but the method can be used in other similar regions. For this purpose, weather data was collected from 181 synoptic stations in 31 provinces of Iran. The potential evapotranspiration was estimated using 22 radiation-based methods and compared with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Penman-Monteith method. The results show that the Stephens method estimates the potential evapotranspiration better than other methods for provinces of Iran. However, the values of R2 varied from 0.93 to 0.98 for 15 provinces of Iran. Therefore, the methods were calibrated and precision of estimation was increased (the values of R2 were less than 0.99 for 4 provinces in the modified methods). The radiation-based methods estimated the potential evapotranspiration in the central provinces of Iran (solar radiation between 24.0 and 25.0MJm-2day-1, annual relative humidity less than 50%, and sunshine more than 250hmonth-1) better than other provinces. The most precise methods were the Berengena-Gavilan method for Esfahan (ES) (before calibration), the Stephens method for Zanjan (ZA) and Lorestan (LO), and the Stephens-Stewart method for Semnan (SE) (after calibration). Finally, a list of the best performances of each method is presented to use in other region studies according to mean, maximum, and minimum temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, elevation, sunshine, and wind speed. The best temperatures to use radiation-based equations are 10-26 degrees C, 16.5-24.0 degrees C (with the exception of Jones-Ritchie), and 5-13 degrees C for mean, maximum, and minimum temperature, respectively. The results are also useful for selecting the best model when radiation-based models must be applied based on available data.