• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.285-299
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• 2023

Estimating the evapotranspiration is very important factor for effective water resources management, and FAO Penman-Monteith (FAO P-M) model has been applied for reference evapotranspiration estimation by many researchers. However, because various input data are required for the application of FAO P-M model, understanding the effect of each input data on FAO P-M model is necessary. Therefore, in this study, for 56 study stations located in South Korea, the effects of 8 meteorological factors (maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, solar radiation, vapor pressure deficit, net radiation, ground heat flux), energy and aerodynamic terms of FAO P-M model, and elevation on FAO P-M reference evapotranspiration (RET) estimation were analyzed. The relative sensitivity analysis was performed to determine how 10% increment of each specific independent variable affects a reference evapotranspiration under given set of condition that other independent variables are unchanged. Furthermore, to select the 5 representative stations and perform the monthly relative sensitivity analysis for those stations, 56 study stations were classified into 5 clusters using cluster analysis. The study results showed that net radiation was turned out to be the most sensitive factor in 8 meteorological factors for 56 study stations. The next most sensitive factor was relative humidity, solar radiation, maximum temperature, vapor pressure deficit and wind speed, followed by minimum temperature in order. Ground heat flux was the least sensitive factor. In case of ground surface condition, elevation showed very low positive relative sensitivity. Relativity sensitivities of energy and aerodynamic terms of FAO P-M model were 0.707 for energy term and 0.293 for aerodynamic term respectively, indicating that energy term was more contributable than aerodynamic term for reference evapotranspiration. The monthly relative sensitivities of meteorological factors showed the seasonal effects, and also the relative sensitivity of elevation showed different pattern each other among study stations. Therefore, for the application of FAO P-M model, the seasonal and regional sensitivity differences of each input variable should be considered.