Int. J. Water, Vol. 10, No.

1, 2016 55

Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial

intelligence techniques in predicting reference
evapotranspiration: a review

Shafika Sultan Abdullah*

Department of Civil Engineering,
Universiti Tenaga Nasional,
Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN,
43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia
and
Akre Technical Institute,
Dohuk polytechnic University,
Dohuk, Iraq
Email: sha_akre@yahoo.com
*Corresponding author

Marlinda Abdul Malek

The Institute of Energy, Policy and Research (IEPRe),
Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia
Email: Marlinda@uniten.edu.my

Abstract: Evapotranspiration is a fundamental requirement in the planning and

management of irrigation projects. Methods of predicting evapotranspiration
(ET) are numerous, but the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
United Nations adopted the FAO Penman-Monteith (PM) equation, as the
method which provides the most accurate results for the prediction of reference
evapotranspiration (ET0) in all regions and for all weather conditions. The main
identified drawback in the application of this method is the wide variety of
weather parameters required for the prediction. To overcome this problem,
artificial neural networks (ANNs) models have been proposed to simulate the
nonlinear, dynamic ET0 processes. This paper highlights both the traditional
empirical PM method, and the enhancement obtained by the utilisation of ANN
techniques in predicting ET0.

Keywords: FAO Penman-Monteith equation; artificial neural network; ANN;

extreme learning machine; ELM; evapotranspiration.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Abdullah, S.S. and

Malek, M.A. (2016) ‘Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial
intelligence techniques in predicting reference evapotranspiration: a review’,
Int. J. Water, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp.55–66.

Biographical notes: Shafika Sultan Abdullah is a PhD student in Civil

Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional,
Malaysia. She received her MSc in Irrigation and Drainage Engineering from
College of Engineering, University of Mosul, Iraq. She is currently a Lecturer
in Akre Technical Institute, Dohuk Polytechnic University, Iraq.

Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

56 S.S. Abdullah and M.A. Malek

Marlinda Abdul Malek received her PhD in Civil Engineering from Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia. She is currently an Associate Professor at Civil
Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional,
Malaysia.

1 Introduction

Evapotranspiration (ET) consists of two main parts, evaporation and transpiration. In

evaporation, liquid water from open water surfaces, soil, and vegetation surfaces is
converted into gas or vapour through energy exchange operation between water
molecules and energy supply resources such as direct solar radiation and ambient air
temperature (Jensen et al., 1990). The force needed to remove the vapour from
evaporation surfaces is the difference between vapour pressure at evaporation surface and
the atmosphere. The continuity of the evaporation process depends, to large extent, on air
movement which will help in replacing saturated air with drier air (Ga.water.usgs.gov.,
2013). In the transpiration process, plants emit most of the water absorbed from the soil
to the atmosphere, except for a very tiny portion used within plant tissue. Transpiration,
like evaporation, depends on solar radiation, air temperature, wind, and air moisture or
humidity (Allen and Pruitt, 1986). There are some other additional factors that affect the
transpiration process like soil moisture content, salinity, waterlogging and field practices
(Thornthwaite and Holtman, 1942; Penman, 1963; Monteith, 1985; Munro, 1987).
In the field, both evaporation and transpiration occur simultaneously, which makes it
difficult to distinguish the individual processes. In bare soils or at sowing, evaporation
supplies the atmosphere with 100% of its moisture content, while at full crop cover more
than 90% of ET comes from transpiration; the other 10% comes from evaporation
(Smith et al., 1992; Pereira et al., 1999). The term evapotranspiration (ET) is widely used
to describe the loss of water to the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration
(Allen et al., 1998). Figure 1 outlines the processes of evapotranspiration.

Figure 1 Evapotranspiration processes

 Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial intelligence techniques 57

2 Prediction of evapotranspiration

There are numerous methods for the prediction of ET; some of them involve direct
methods that can be applied to measure or determine ET values immediately. Lysimeters
are mostly used for research purposes because of construction and maintenance
difficulties and expenses (Rana and Katerji, 2000; Wright, 1988; Allen et al., 1998).
Scintillometer devices are used to measure small fluctuations of the refractive index of air
caused by variations in temperature, humidity, and pressure (De Bruin et al., 1993). Eddy
covariance technique has been used by micrometeorologists. Since the early 1990s as an
approach that uses direct measurements and calculations to analyse wind and scalar
atmospheric data series and yields values of vertical turbulent fluxes within atmospheric
boundary layers (lowest part of the troposphere near the ground) (Foken, 2008). This
technique requires significant care in the setting up of the ultrasonic anemometer and
infrared gas analyser; moreover it is mathematically complex to process the measured
data and correctly interpret the measured fluxes (Burba, 2013). The global satellite
remote sensing systems are designed and qualified to collect and integrate data from
reception stations and utilise them in providing wide variety of needed information
including evapotranspiration.
The indirect methods are empirical methods with measured or estimated weather
parameters. These methods are presented as an adequate alternative to the former direct
methods and represent a good approximation of reality. The empirical models approach is
based on statistical functions of approximation between weather parameters data, as
independent variables, and predicted values of ET (Thornthwaite, 1948; Blaney and
Criddle, 1950; Jensen and Haise, 1963; Hargreaves and Samani, 1985). Penman (1948)
derived an equation for prediction of evaporation from open surfaces by the combination
of energy balance with mass transfer methods. The combination method introduced the
resistance factors simulating aerodynamic resistance (Garrat and Hicks, 1973); allowing
the application of this equation for the estimation of the ET from crop surfaces (Monteith
and Unsworth, 2013; Landeras et al., 2008). The need to determine precise estimates of
ET produced the need for another comprehensive concept, namely, reference
evapotranspiration (ET0), which can be defined as “the rate of evapotranspiration from an
extensive surface of 8 to 15 cm tall, green grass cover of uniform height, actively
growing, completely shading the ground and not short of water” (Doorenbos and Pruitt,
1977). The ET of crop (ETc) could be related to ET0 values by introducing crop
coefficient (i.e., Etc = ET0 × Kc) (Yoder et al., 2005). Crop coefficient (Kc) combines all
the physical and physiological differences between crops. The experts of FAO of the
United Nations, in 1998, adopted the combination method of PM equation as the only
standard equation for prediction of ET0, and for the calibration of other empirical
equations (Allen et al., 1998; Walter et al., 2000).
During the last decades, artificial neural networks (ANNs) techniques have been
successfully applied in predicting ET0 to overcome drawbacks in the application of PM
equation. The scope of this paper is to review researches associated with PM equation
and the applications of ANNs in predicting ET0.
58 S.S. Abdullah and M.A. Malek

2.1 Penman-Monteith equation

Evapotranspiration data are frequently needed for the planning and management of
irrigation schemes especially in arid and semiarid regions, yet it is difficult to obtain
accurate field measurement at short notice; and that is the main reason behind introducing
empirical methods as an effective alternative. A wide variety of empirical methods has
been developed in different locations and for various weather conditions. The panel of
experts of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) proposed the PM combination
method as a new standard equation recommended for the estimation of ET0 after
comparing results of lysimeters, located at 11 stations in different climatic zones around
the world, with those of 20 empirical methods (Allen et al., 1998). The equation, in the
FAO formula, includes all the climatic parameters affecting the ET0 process; thus, ET0
could be predicted using standard climatological records of a specific location, at any
time intervals such as daily, ten days, or monthly. The equation formula shows all the
climatological and physical parameters that control energy exchange in the evaporation
and transpiration processes.

900
0.408Δ ( R n − G ) + γ u 2 ( es − e a )
ET0 = T + 273 (1)
Δ + γ (1 + 0.34u 2 )

where ET0 = reference evapotranspiration (mm/day), Δ = slope of vapour pressure curve

(kPa °C–1), Rn = net radiation (MJ m–2day–1), G = density of soil heat flux (MJ m–2day–1),
ϒ = psychometric constant (kPa °C–1), T = average daily air temperature (°C), U2 = wind
speed at height 2 m (m s–1), (es – ea) = deficit in saturation vapour pressure (kPa).
Researchers have analysed the performance of PM equation for different locations
and weather conditions in comparison with results obtained by using other
empirical methods or lysimeters (Shahrokhnia and Sepaskhah, 2012; Subedi et al.,
2013). The main identified constraint in the application of this equation is the variety of
weather parameters needed for the calculation of ET0, which may not be available for
some locations especially in developing countries (Shiri et al., 2012; Tabari and Talaee,
2013).

2.2 Artificial neural networks

ANNs are simulation models of biological nerve cells (neurons) and the way they
interact (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1986; Zurada, 1992). ANN techniques have been
successfully applied in many fields of scientific research. The trend to express natural or
artificial phenomena with mathematical models to imitate the biological human brain
functions has proved to be a success for the last decades. Therefore, ANNs have been
widely used in the area of pattern recognition, predicting and forecasting (Warner and
Misra, 1996; Basheer and Hajmeer, 2000).
Neural networks represent a flexible computational model in which solution to
problems is learned from a set of examples (Bishop, 1994; Sudheer et al., 2003b; Kisi,
2004a, 2004b). The main methodology in the application procedure of ANNs-based
models, in general, is divided into training, validation and testing performances,
 Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial intelligence techniques 59

respectively. The training performance is the determination of the optimal parameters; it

usually proceeds in an analogous manner (Bishop, 1994). The validation performance is
generally used to overcome the over fitting problem in the ANN model architecture. This
technique has been often applied during the training performance from the literature cited
(Kiranyaz et al., 2009). The testing (validation) performance is the key-point procedure
of the ANN models; ANN models are tested by determining whether the model meets the
objectives of modelling within some pre-established criteria.
ANNs have been efficiently used by many researchers in developing models for
pattern recognition and the prediction of many hydrological phenomena like stream flow,
rainfall, suspended sediment and evapotranspiration (Maier and Dandy, 2000; Tayfur,
2002; Cancelliere et al., 2002; Cigizoglu, 2003; Supharatid, 2003; Kisi, 2004a, 2004b;
Jain et al., 2004; Kisi 2005, 2009; Shiri et al., 2013; Citakoglu et al., 2014). The
application of ANN techniques is still attracting researchers in hydrology, among many
other fields, to the field of modelling ET0 to overcome obstacles in the applications of
empirical methods.
Kumar et al. (2002) investigated the application of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) of
ANNs in estimating ET0. The standard backpropagation algorithm with learning rates of
0.2 and 0.8 and backpropagation with momentum performance were compared with
traditional PM equation for the estimations of daily ET0 obtained by employing two sets
of climatic data consisting of: maximum and minimum air temperature, maximum and
minimum relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation for Davis, California. The
weighted standard error of estimate (WSEE) and minimal ANN were selected as the
performance evaluation functions of ANN with different architecture of inputs, hidden,
and output layers. ANN with six inputs, seven hidden layers and one output showed
better performance in estimating ET0 than the PM equation, in comparison with lysimeter
measurements for Davis.
Trajkovic (2005) indicate that the main obstacle in PM equation is the wide variety of
weather data needed for the calculations. The research tests the possibility of obtaining
reliable results depending on maximum and minimum air temperature only. This
objective was achieved by evaluating the performance of four temperature-based methods
for the estimation of ET0 namely: radial basis function (RBF) network, Thornthwaite,
Hargreaves, and reduced set PM equations, in comparison with the standard PM
equation. The study area in Serbia consists of seven weather stations. The RBF
performance was the nearest to the PM ET0 at almost all of the locations, this means that
RBF can be proposed for predicting ET0 depending on air temperature records only at
locations where most of the climatic parameters such as relative humidity, wind speed or
solar radiation are missing or not available.
Kisi (2006) investigated the possibility of using the generalised regression neural
network (GRNN) techniques, with four different input combinations, for modelling ET0
obtained using PM equation. The meteorological records of Pomona and Santa Monica
stations (Los Angeles, USA) are used as inputs for the GRNN models; the criteria of the
models performance are the mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE) and
determination coefficient (R2). The results indicate that the GRNN1 model, that employs
daily air temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (U2) and radiation (R) of
the station itself, could be used successfully in modelling ET0 better than the GRNN2
model using data of other nearby stations.
60 S.S. Abdullah and M.A. Malek

Figure 2 PM and estimated ET0 values of the Pomona Station

Kisi and Ozturk (2007) adopted AI in computations of ET0. Values of ET0 were obtained
by the application of PM equation using four years records of daily climate parameters of
Pomona Station and Santa Monika Station, operated by the California Irrigation
Management Information System (CIMIS), the results were compared with the adaptive
neurofuzzy inference system models (ANFIS) and ANN, and in comparison with
Hargreaves and Ritchie empirical methods. The comparative results proved the
superiority of ANFIS with inputs of T, U2, Rh and R in modelling daily ET0 over the
ANN and empirical methods.
Kim and Kim (2008) developed and applied three different types of generalised
regression neural network models (GRNNM) with GA, to predict the pan evaporation
(PE) and ET0 in South Korea. Daily weather parameters from 1985 to 1992 for 14 major
meteorological stations, distributed all over South Korea to represent the whole weather
conditions, were employed in PM equation and GRNNM-GA for prediction of ET0. The
Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (E), MAE, root mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of
correlation (CC) were employed as standard statistical indexes for evaluation of
GRNNM-GA. The Optimal Combine-GRNNM-GA type provided better results than the
Extreme-GRNNM-GA and the Average-GRNNM-GA types.
Kisi (2008) investigated the capability of three techniques of ANN: the GRNN,
MLPs, and the radial basis neural networks (RBNNs) of simulating PM ET0 obtained
using daily climatic data of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and solar
radiation from Pomona and Santa Monica stations in Los Angeles, USA. Daily climatic
data were applied again as inputs for the ANN techniques for the estimation of ET0. The
calibration criteria are MSE, MAE and R2 for evaluation of ANN models performance.
Results proved that MLP, RBNN and RBNNs could be successfully used in modelling
PM ET0.
Landeras et al. (2008) implemented seven ANN techniques with different inputs and
compared the results to ten empirical and semi-empirical ET0 equations calibrated to PM
equation using meteorological data as inputs. The comparisons criteria are the statistical
error techniques; using PM daily ET0 values as a reference. ANN techniques have
obtained better results than the calibrated equations.
El-Baroudy et al. (2010) explored the effectiveness of data driven techniques (DDT),
which depend on the information within the basic dataset to distinguish the functional
relation between input and output data for modelling actual evapotranspiration (AET)
 Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial intelligence techniques 61

measured by the Eddy covariance system; and also to study the effect of previous states
(time lags) of input climatic data variables for two case studies in Canada. The
evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) was utilised in this paper for modelling the
AET from identical climate data; in comparison with ANN and genetic programming
(GP) models. The three DDT show relatively comparable performance, yet
the EPR model provided a simpler model and the performance was enhanced with the
inclusion of previous states which also reveal the dynamic nature of the
evapotranspiration process.
Kisi (2010) concluded that fuzzy genetic (FG) approach has superiority in modelling
daily ET0 for three stations Windsor, Oakville and Santa Rosa, in central California, over
the empirical methods, which are California Irrigation Management System Penman,
Turc, Hargreaves, and Ritchie methods. The FG model performance was also compared
with ANNs estimates using values of ET0 obtained by application of PM equation with
daily weather data of air temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity, and wind speed
for each of the three stations.
Traore et al. (2010) studied the potential of developing ANN model of ET0
estimations depending on PM equation, to cope with situations where adequate climatic
data may not be available in meteorological stations of the study area. The researchers
employed the empirical Hargreaves (HARG) equation for the prediction of ET0
depending on air temperature data only to assess the performance of feedforward
backpropagation ANN (BPNN) in comparison with standard PM estimations. The
statistical results indicate that the performance of BPNN model based on temperature
data only is better than the HARG; R2 increased significantly by introducing wind speed
parameter and to a less degree when relative humidity and sunshine were introduced in
the model. Evaluations indicate that wind speed is the most effective variable to be taken
into consideration in modelling the ET0 processes.
Eslamian et al. (2012) investigated the effectiveness of ANN and hybrid of
ANN with genetic algorithm (ANN-GA) models as tools for modelling PM ET0
based on meteorological data of Esfahan province (Iran). The meteorological data
comprises maximum, minimum and average air temperature, relative humidity, wind
speed and sunshine duration for the period 1951–2005. The predicted values of
ANN-GA model were better than those of the ANN model; both using PM ET0 as a
reference.

Figure 3 ET0 values estimated by the MLP4 model trained with the Levenberg-Marquardt
algorithm for test period (see online version for colours)
62 S.S. Abdullah and M.A. Malek

Khoshhal and Mokarram (2012) evaluated different structures of MLP for the estimation
of ET0. The meteorological data of Eghlid station in Iran for the period 2000–2010 are
used as inputs while the values of ET0 obtained by applying the same meteorological data
in PM equation are used as output. The performance of ten ANN models with different
inputs was evaluated. The functions used for evaluation are RMSE, MAE, and R2. The
model with Tmin, Tmax, Rh, R, and U2 proved to be more accurate in predicting ET0 than
other models.
Shiri et al. (2012) presented a gene expression programming (GEP) model for the
prediction of daily ET0 in Basque country (Spain). Records of daily weather parameters
including air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation of four
weather stations for the period (1999–2003) were employed in the estimation of PM ET0;
GEP model was implemented using PM equation as a reference. The results obtained
from GEP model were compared with models of Priestley-Taylor, the adaptive
neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and Hargreaves–Samani. The performance of
both GEP and ANFIS models was almost identical, but the simplicity of mathematical
formulation of GEP model, made it the best alternative for the estimation of ET0 in
situations of absence of meteorological data necessary for the application of PM
equation.
Tabari and Talaee (2013) indicate that the main obstacle in the application of PM
equation is the broad variety of meteorological data essential as inputs for the calculation
of ET0. Moreover, the nonlinearity of the ET phenomenon would make it hard to predict
precisely the effects of climate parameters changes on the ET process. The authors used
different techniques of MLP Networks for modelling of ET0 in a semiarid region in
Hamedan, Iran, with complete datasets of climate variables and with the absence of some
of these variables. In addition, various types of learning algorithms were used to
optimise and activate functions of MLP networks. The MLP4 model trained with the
Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and inputs of mean air temperature (Tmean), relative
humidity (RH), wind speed (U2) and sunshine hours (n) performed best among other
MLP models.

3 Discussion

ANN modelling is usually proposed where sufficient historical records related to certain
phenomena are available. The nonlinearity and flexibility of ANN in performing
simulation models without the need of identifying constant relationships between inputs
variables and the outputs, and also the possibility of optimising functions of ANN by
inserting other techniques like genetic algorithm (GA) or ants colony (AC) have made it
the best choice whenever sufficient historical data are available for training. Simulation
Models of ANNs have been successfully applied in predicting floods, stream flow,
rainfall, suspended sediment, and evapotranspiration; the desired simulation model can be
achieved by employing various tools and techniques of ANN (Suliman et al., 2013). The
main identified drawback in the application of ANN is that the learning speed is
relatively slower than required (Huang et al., 2006). In this study, another alternative
technique is proposed for the prediction of ET0 namely, the extreme learning machine
(ELM) technique. ELM is a new learning algorithm that has significant advantages over
the traditional gradient-based algorithms as having extremely fast learning speed and
better generalisation performance.
 Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial intelligence techniques 63

Siah Yap and Jen Yap (2012) applied a multi agent system, the online sequential
extreme learning machine (OSELM) neural network, with weighted average strategy
(MASOSELM-WA) in solving problems of data regression. The electrical load
forecasting problem is the criterion to evaluate this model. The results of evaluation show
a good prediction performance. ELM has not yet been applied in predicting ET0.
Therefore, it is suggested that the efficiency of this proposed technique is to be tested by
the authors against PM equation.

4 Summary and conclusions

The precise estimation of evapotranspiration is a fundamental requirement in the

planning and management of irrigation projects. The employment of multiple elements of
weather data in the application of Penman-Monteith equation, generally, provides the
most accurate results for the estimation of ET0, but the availability, collection, and
processing of comprehensive historical climatic data in correlation with geographic
properties of location needs a lot of efforts, time, and care for each project or study case.
Therefore, the application of this equation is not feasible in all study cases. According to
previously reviewed studies, the appropriate alternative is the application of ANN
simulation models either separately or hybridised with some other techniques. The
flexibility and variety of ANN tools, and their capability to represent better than any
other technique the nonlinear relationship between input variables and the output in
evapotranspiration processes, have made them the preferred choice as compared to
traditional methods (i.e., empirical equations). Some of the studies show that the
performance of ANN models is even better than the traditional methods in estimating ET0
using PM equation or actual field measurements as a reference for comparison.

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