The calibration of evaporation models against the Penman-Monteith equation on Lake Most

Abstract

Evaporation is one of the main components of the water cycle in nature. Our interest in free water surface evaporation is due to the needs of ongoing hydric recultivation of the former Lezaky-Most quarry, i.e., Lake Most, and also other planned hydric recultivations in the region. One of the key components of hydric reclamation planning is the securitization of long-term sustainability, which is based on the capability to keep the final water level at a stable level. In our work, we are interested in the evaporation estimation in the area of Lake Most (Czech Republic, Europe). This lake has been artificially created only a few years ago, and nowadays we are looking for a simple evaporation model, based on which we will be able to decide which measurement devices have to be installed at the location to provide more localized data to the model. In this paper, we calibrate state-of-the-art simplified evaporation models against the Penman-Monteith equation based on the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency maximization. We discuss the suitability of this approach using real-world climate data from the weather station located one km from the area of interest.