Practical estimates of lake evaporation.

Abstract

Practical estimates of lake evaporation must take into account the changes in the temperature and humidity that occur when the air passes from the land to the lake environment. The complementary relationship between potential and areal evapotranspiration provides such a capability and is used, in combination with an approximate technique for taking into account subsurface heat storage changes, as the basis for formulating the complementary relationship lake evaporation (CRLE) model. The CRLE model can utilize routine climatological data to provide estimates of lake evaporation anywhere in the world with no need for locally calibrated coefficients. Model estimates are compared with published water budget estimates for sixteen lakes in North America and one lake in East Africa. -from Author