Engineering Hydrology Solved Examples & Exercise on Evaporation

Excersie & Examples on Evaporation

1. Brainstorm yourself to understand & explain why you need to study Evaporation??
2. At a climate station, air pressure is measured as 100 kPa & air temperature as 200C, and the
dew-point temperature as 16°C. Calculate the corresponding vapor pressure (saturated and
actual vapor pressure) and relative humidity.

Solution: The temperature at which air would just become saturated at a given specific
humidity is its dew-point temperature Td. The relative humidity Rh is the ratio of the actual
vapor pressure to its saturation value at a given air temperature.

Where es is saturated vapor pressure, ea is actual vapor pressure and Rh is relative humidity.
The saturated vapor pressure at T = 200C is estimated as:
17.27∗20)
𝑒𝑠 = 611 exp(237.3+20) = 2339𝑝𝑎

And the actual vapor pressure ea is calculated by the same method substituting the dew-point
temperature, Td = 16°C

17.27 ∗ 16)
𝑒𝑎 = 611 exp( = 1819𝑝𝑎
237.3 + 16)

𝑒𝑎 1819
𝑅ℎ = = = 0.78
𝑒𝑠 2339

3. Calculate the evaporation rate from a lake (deep and small) by Meyer formula. The
measured dew point temperature & relative humidity at the lake was 20 0c & 0.6. The mean
monthly speed of blowing wind measured above the water surface at 2m is 3 km/hr and 0.5
km/hr respectively.
4. Estimate the PET of an area for the season November to February in which wheat is grown
, the area is located at latitude of 300N with a mean monthly temperature as follows

Month Nov Dec Jan Feb

Temperature (0c) 16.5 13 11 14.5

Use Blaney Criddle Method

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 Engineering Hydrology Solved Examples & Exercise on Evaporation

Solution

The equation developed by Blaney Criddle is

PET=  K.F Where F= P (0.0457 Tm  0.8128)

Where F is the monthly consumptive use factor, PET the potential evapotranspiration in cm, Tm
the mean monthly temperature in 0C, P is the monthly percentage of hours of bright sunshine and
K is the monthly crop coefficient to be determined from experimental data.

Month Tm(0C) P (from table) F K(for wheat) PET

Nov 16.5 7.19 11.2 0.65 7.27
Dec 13 7.15 10.06 0.65 6.54
Jan 11 7.3 9.6 0.65 6.24
Feb 14.5 7.03 10.37 0.65 6.74
PET=26.79cm
So the PET during the 4 months is 26.79cm in monthly basis.

5. Meteorological data’s of watershed has been reported for estimation of evapotranspiration

in June.
 Location of Met Stations Where Evaporation is to be estimated: Latitude: 100N &
Longitude: 36 0W where Mean Monthly temperature is 18 °C.
 Minimum Air temperature is 15 °C & Maximum Air temperature is 23°C
 Relative humidity: 0.7 , Wind Speed at 2m height: 8 km/hr

The area around the station is barren land and take the average actual sunshine duration in the
area is 7 hr. Estimate the Evapotranspiration (PET) by Penman Method.

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 Engineering Hydrology Solved Examples & Exercise on Evaporation

6. A moderate deep reservoir with a surface area of 250 ha had the following average values of
parameters during a week. Water temperature =20oc, relative humidity = 40 %, wind
velocity at 1m above the ground =16km/h. Estimate the average daily evaporation from the
lake and the volume of water evaporated from the lake during that one week. Use Meyer
Formula.

Solution:

Where U is monthly mean wind speed in km/h at 9 m above ground.

7. A catchment which was found at latitude of 20oN and at an elevation of 770 masl. The mean
monthly temperature is given below. Calculate the monthly and Annual PET for this catchment
using Thornthwiate’s formula.

Month Jan Feb. Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Mean 22.5 24.5 27 28 27 25 23.5 24 24 24.5 23 22.5
Monthly
Temp(oc)

Solution: Thornthwiate’s (1948) developed an exponential relationship between mean monthly

temperature and mean monthly consumptive to estimate PET as: -

Where Rf is the reduction factor (depends on location with respect to season) , T m the mean
monthly temperature in 0C, a is a constant and Te is the annual temperature efficiency index

1. compute the annual temperature efficiency index for each month

2. Compute the constant “a” independently for each month
3. Read the reduction factor for each month
4. Estimate PET for all the months
5. Sum up all the values to know the annual PET

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