Are remote sensing evapotranspiration models reliable across South
American climates and ecosystems?
Abstract
Many remote sensing-based evapotranspiration (RSBET) algorithms have
been proposed in the past decades and evaluated using flux tower data,
mainly over North America and Europe. Model evaluation across South
America has been done locally or using only a single algorithm at a
time. Here, we provide the first evaluation of multiple RSBET models, at
a daily scale, across a wide variety of biomes, climate zones, and land
uses in South America. We used meteorological data from 25 flux towers
to force four remote sensing based ET models: Priestley & Taylor Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL), Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model
(GLEAM), Penman-Monteith Mu model (PM-MOD), and Penman-Monteith Nagler
model (PM-VI). ET was predicted satisfactorily by all four models, with
correlations consistently higher (R²>0.6) for GLEAM and
PT-JPL, and PM-MOD and PM-VI presenting overall better responses in
terms of PBIAS (-10