基于AMSR-E的全球陆表被动微波发射率数据集

地表微波发射率表征了地物向外发射微波辐射的能力,星载被动微波发射率估算可在宏观、大尺度上对陆表微波辐射进行整体表达,是被动微波地表参数定量反演中重要基础数据,也是在大尺度上获取陆表微波辐射特征的一种途径。本数据集利用搭载在Aqua卫星上的高级微波扫描辐射计(AMSR-E)和中分辨率成像光谱仪(MODIS)的同步观测特点,采用MODIS的地表温度和大气水汽产品数据作为输入,基于考虑大气影响的发射率估算模型,生产了全球晴空条件下AMSR-E传感器运行期间(2002年6月~2011年10月)的陆表多通道双极化微波瞬时发射率。通过产品低频无线电信号影响、数据间比对、分布统计、不同地表覆盖条件的发射率特征、频率依赖和相关性研究等开展验证性分析,结果表明:瞬时发射率的动态大、细节表达丰富,月内日变化标准差在0.02以内,其时空变化、频率依赖和相关性等符合微波理论分析和自然物理过程理解。此套数据集还包括AMSR-E全生命周期的全球陆表逐日、侯、旬、半月及月产品,可用于开展星载被动微波遥感模拟、陆面模型以及陆表温度、积雪、大气降水/水汽/可降水量等反演研究。     

陆面数据同化系统的研究综述

大气、海洋数据同化系统的完善和发展,促进了陆面数据同化系统的研究。本世纪初,随着北美(全球)陆面数据同化系统的建立,利用卫星、雷达数据同化地表土壤水分、地表温度、能量通量等工作正逐步展开。与此同时,陆面数据同化的研究也已经成为当前陆面过程和水文过程研究的热点。以北美(全球)陆面数据同化系统、欧洲陆面数据同化系统、中国西部陆面数据同化系统为例,对当前陆面数据同化系统的基本框架作了详细介绍;并指出了当前陆面数据同化系统发展中有待解决的若干问题。     

A coupled Land Atmosphere Radiative-Transfer Model (LA-RTM) for multi-frequency passive microwave remote sensing: development and application over Wakasa Bay and the Tibetan Plateau

Multi-frequency passive microwave sensors herald a new dawn for combined land and atmosphere observations. Past efforts to utilize microwave remote sensing of atmosphere and land surface have proceeded by treating these two areas in a parallel fashion. In this research, a unified approach is presented that can be used to improve both quantitative and qualitative understanding of land and atmosphere constituents. A coupled Land Atmosphere Radiative-Transfer Model (LA-RTM) that can be used as a forward model in retrieval algorithms, or as an observation operator in data-assimilation schemes is developed. This model is validated using data collected during the 2003 Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on board the Earth Observing Satellite (AMSR/AMSR-E) validation experiment over Wakasa Bay in Japan and the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP) dataset for the Tibetan Plateau collected in April and August 2004. These datasets comprise satellite (AMSR-R) observations, ground-based microwave radiometers (GBMRs) and radiosonde atmosphere soundings. In both sites, good agreement between simulated and observed brightness temperatures is demonstrated. To facilitate fast retrievals, a retrieval scheme is proposed that uses LA-RTM as a forward model to generate a look-up table (LUT) for varying land-surface conditions. This LUT is used to retrieve soil-moisture and surface-roughness conditions for the target site. Using this scheme, retrieved soil moisture at in situ stations was shown to have fairly good agreement with observations.     

Improving Soil Moisture Estimation by Joint Assimilationof MODIS Land Surface Temperature and Airborne L band Microwave Brightness Temperature

In this work,a novel soil moisture data assimilation scheme was developed,which was based land surface model (CoLM,Common Land Model),microwave radioactive transfer model (L MEB,L band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere),and data assimilation algorithm (EnKS,Ensemble Kalman Smoother).This scheme is used to improve the estimation of soil moisture profile by jointly assimilatingMODIS land surface temperature and airborne L band passive microwave brightness temperature.The ground based data observed at DAMAN superstation,which is located at Yingke oasis desert area in the middle stream of the Heihe River Basin,are used to conduct this experiment and validate assimilation results.Three LAI products are used to analyze the influence of LAI on soil temperature.Three assimilation experiments are also designed in this work,including assimilation of MODIS LST,assimilation of microwave brightness temperature,and assimilation of MODIS LST and microwave brightness temperature.The results show that the uncertainties in LAI influence significantly soil temperature simulations in different soil layers.MODIS LAI product is seriously underestimated in this study area,which results soil temperature overestimation about 4~6 K.Three assimilation schemes can improve soil moisture estimations to different extend.Joint assimilation of MODIS LST and microwave brightness temperature achieved the best performance,which can reduce the RMSE of soil moisture to 31%~53%.     

A comparison study on empirical microwave soil moisture downscaling methods based on the integration of microwave-optical/IR data on the Tibetan Plateau

Soil moisture plays a vital role in land surface energy and the water cycle. Microwave remote sensing is widely used because of the physically based relationship between the land surface emission observed and soil moisture. However, the application of retrieved soil moisture data is restricted by its coarse spatial resolution. To overcome this weakness, downscaling methods should be developed to disaggregate coarse resolution microwave soil moisture data to fine resolution. The traditional method is the microwave-optical/IR synergistic approach, in which land surface temperature, vegetation index, and surface albedo are key parameters. Five purely empirical methods based on the triangle feature are selected in this study. To evaluate their performance on downscaling microwave soil moisture, these methods are applied to the Zoige Plateau in China using the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM) soil moisture product and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) optical/IR products. The coarse-resolution AMSR-E LPRM soil moisture data are disaggregated into the high resolution of the MODIS product, and the surface soil moisture measurements of the Maqu soil moisture observation network located in the plateau are used to validate the downscaling results. Results show that (1) the relationship models used in these methods can generally capture the variation in soil moisture, with R² around 0.6, but have a relatively high uncertainty under conditions of high soil moisture; (2) the methods can provide high-resolution soil moisture distribution, but the downscaled soil moisture presents a low level correlation with field measurements at different spatial and temporal scales. This comparative study provides insight into the performance of popular purely empirical downscaling methods on enhancing the spatial resolution of soil moisture on the Tibetan Plateau. Although synergistic methods can improve the spatial resolution of AMSR-E soil moisture data, additional studies are needed to exclude the uncertainty from AMSR-E soil moisture estimation, the low sensitivity of the relationship model under high soil moisture, and the spatial representativeness difference between coarse pixels and point measurement.     

青藏高原地表微波比辐射率的反演与分析

利用Aqua卫星上同时搭载的AMSR-E和MODIS提供同步观测的微波和红外资料,反演青藏高原地区陆面微波比辐射率。结合MODIS反演的地表类型资料,分析该地区陆地微波比辐射率随地表类型、微波频率、不同时间尺度的变化特征。结果表明：该地区主要的3种地表类型中,草地比辐射率普遍高于裸地和灌木丛,并且后两者比辐射率的量值和...     

Evaluation of AMSR-E soil moisture results using the in-situ data over the Little River Experimental Watershed, Georgia

An operational global soil moisture data product is currently generated from the observations of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) aboard NASA's Aqua satellite using the retrieval procedure described in Njoku and Chan [Njoku, E.G. and Chan, S.K., 2006. Vegetation and surface roughness effects on AMSR-E land observations, remote sensing environment, 100(2), 190-199]. We have generated another soil moisture dataset from the same AMSR-E observed brightness temperature data using the Land Surface Microwave Emission Model (LSMEM) adopting a different estimation method. This paper focuses on a comparison study of soil moisture estimates from the above two methods. The soil moisture data from current AMSR-E product and LSMEM are compared with the in-situ measured soil moisture datasets over the Little River Experimental Watershed (LREW), Georgia, USA for the year 2003. The comparison study was carried out separately for the AMSR-E daytime and night time overpasses. The LSMEM method performed better than the current operational AMSR-E retrieval algorithm in this study. The differences between the AMSR-E and LSMEM results are mostly due to differences in various simplifications and assumptions made for variables in the radiative transfer equations and the soil and vegetation based physical models and the accuracy of the input surface temperature datasets for the LSMEM forward model approach. This study confirms that remote sensing data have the potential to provide useful hydrologic information, but the accuracy of the geophysical parameters could vary depending on the estimation methods. It cannot be concluded from this study whether the soil moisture estimation by the LSMEM approach will perform better in other geographic, climatic or topographic conditions. Nevertheless, this study sheds light on the effects of different approaches for the estimation of geophysical parameters, which may be useful for current and future satellite missions.     

FY-3微波成像仪地表参数反演研究

风云3号卫星FY-3是实现全球、全天候、三维、定量、多光谱遥感的我国第2代极轨气象卫星系列。风云3号气象卫星资料中含有丰富的生态环境变化信息,既可以用于对水、火、冰、雪等灾害的监测,也可以用于对植被、土地利用、气溶胶参量的分析。这些结果将会对农业、林业、环境、市政、交通以及政府决策部门提供有效的决策服务。其中搭载的微波成像仪为我国第一个星载微波遥感仪器,其设计频率为10.65 GHz、18.7 GHz、23.8 GHz、36.5 GHz、89 GHz,每个频率有V、H两种不同极化模式,相应的星下点空间分辨率分别为51 km×85 km、30 km×50 km、27 km×45 km、18 km×30 km、9 km×15 km根据FY-3微波成像仪传感器参数特性,利用微波地表辐射传输方程,在10.65、18.7 GHz频段上模拟了地表微波辐射特性,在此基础上建立了地表参数反演算法, 可以同时得到地表土壤水分和地表温度参数。     

Vegetation and surface roughness effects on AMSR-E land observations

Characteristics of the land surface including soil moisture, vegetation cover, and soil roughness among others influence the microwave emissivity and brightness temperature of the surface as observed from space. Knowledge of the variability of microwave signatures of vegetation and soil roughness is necessary to separate these influences from those of soil moisture for remote sensing applications to global hydrology and climate. We describe here a characterization of vegetation and soil roughness at the frequencies and spatial resolution of the EOS Aqua Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E). A single parameter has been used to approximate the combined effects of vegetation and roughness. AMSR-E data have been analyzed to determine the frequency dependence of this parameter and to generate a global vegetation/roughness map and an estimate of seasonal variability. A physical model is used for the analysis with approximations appropriate to the AMSR-E footprint scale and coefficients calibrated empirically against the AMSR-E data. The spatial variabilities of roughness and vegetation cannot be estimated independently using this approach, but their temporal dynamics allow separation of predominantly static roughness effects from time-varying vegetation effects using multitemporal analysis. Global signals of time-varying vegetation water content derived from this analysis of AMSR-E data are consistent with time-varying biomass estimates obtained by optical/infrared remote sensing techniques.     

Estimation of regional terrestrial water cycle using multi-sensor remote sensing observations and data assimilation

An integrated data assimilation system is implemented over the Red-Arkansas river basin to estimate the regional scale terrestrial water cycle driven by multiple satellite remote sensing data. These satellite products include the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI), and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Also, a number of previously developed assimilation techniques, including the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF), the particle filter (PF), the water balance constrainer, and the copula error model, and as well as physically based models, including the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC), the Land Surface Microwave Emission Model (LSMEM), and the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS), are tested in the water budget estimation experiments. This remote sensing based water budget estimation study is evaluated using ground observations driven model simulations. It is found that the land surface model driven by the bias-corrected TRMM rainfall produces reasonable water cycle states and fluxes, and the estimates are moderately improved by assimilating TMI 10.67 GHz microwave brightness temperature measurements that provides information on the surface soil moisture state, while it remains challenging to improve the results by assimilating evapotranspiration estimated from satellite-based measurements.     

Evaluation of soil moisture from satellite observations over South America

A study was performed to evaluate the surface soil moisture derived from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) sensor observations over South America. Other soil moisture and rainfall datasets were also used for the analysis. The information for the soil data came from the Eta regional climate model, and for the rainfall data from the Tropical Rainfall Microwave Mission (TRMM) satellite. Statistical analysis was used to evaluate the quality of the soil moisture and rainfall products, with estimates of the correlation coefficient (R), χ² and Cramer's phi (?_c). The results show high correlations (R > 0.8) of the AMSR-E soil moisture products with the Eta model for different regions of South America. Comparison of soil moisture products with rainfall datasets showed that the AMSR-E C-band soil moisture product was highly correlated with the TRMM satellite rainfall datasets, with the highest values of χ² and ?. The results show that the AMSR-E C-band soil moisture products contain important information that can be used for various purposes, such as monitoring floods or droughts in arid areas or as input within the framework of an assimilation scheme of numerical weather prediction models.     

基于微波遥感和陆面模型的流域土壤水分研究

土壤水分是陆地水文的重要因子。微波遥感是测量土壤水分的一种重要方法。本文总结了基于微波遥感和陆面模型的土壤水分监测方法,包括被动微波法、主动微波法、主被动微波结合法、陆面模型模拟法和数据同化法五种。被动微波对表面土壤水分敏感,但其空间分辨率低;主动微波具有较好的分辨率但运作费用也较高;主被动微波结合则能够充分利用各自的优势。陆面模型在研究中也有重要作用,通过模型模拟能够得到根区土壤水分。而将观测值同化到模型的数据同化法,则能极大的提高土壤水分估计的能力。通过比较,指出数据同化是最有前景的研究领域。     

An evaluation of the nonlinear/non-Gaussian filters for the sequential data assimilation

This paper aims to investigate several new nonlinear/non-Gaussian filters in the context of the sequential data assimilation. The unscented Kalman filter (UKF), the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF), the sampling importance resampling particle filter (SIR-PF) and the unscented particle filter (UPF) are described in the state-space model framework in the Bayesian filtering background. We first evaluated those methods with a simple highly nonlinear Lorenz model and a scalar nonlinear non-Gaussian model to investigate the filter stability and the error sensitivity, and then their abilities in the one-dimensional estimation of the soil moisture content with the synthetic microwave brightness temperature assimilation experiment in the land surface model VIC-3L. All the results are compared with the EnKF. The advantages and disadvantages of each filter are discussed.The results in the Lorenz model showed that the particle filters are suitable for the large measurement interval assimilation and that the Kalman filters were suitable for the frequent measurement assimilation as well as small measurement uncertainties. The EnKF also showed its feasibility for the non-Gaussian noise. The performance of the SIR-PF was actually not as good as that of the UKF or the EnKF regarding a very small observation noise level compared with the uncertainties in the system. In the one-dimensional brightness temperature assimilation experiment, the UKF, the EnKF and the SIR-PF all proved to be flexible and reliable nonlinear filter algorithms for the low dimensional sequential land data assimilation application. For the high dimensional land surface system that takes the horizontal error correlations into account, the UKF is restricted by its computational demand in the covariance propagation; we must use the EnKF, the SIR-PF and other covariance reduction algorithms. The large computational cost prevents the UPF from being applied in practice.     

基于双EnKF的土壤水分与土壤属性参数同时估计

为提高土壤水分数据同化结果的精度,将基于双集合卡尔曼滤波(Dual Ensemble Kalman Filter,DEnKF)的状态-参数估计方案与简单生物圈模型(simple biosphere model 2,SiB2)相结合,同时更新土壤水分和优化模型参数(土壤属性参数)。选用2008年6月1日~10月29日黑河上游阿柔冻融观测站为参考站,开展了同化表层土壤水分观测数据的实验。研究结果表明:DEnKF可同时优化土壤属性参数和改进土壤水分估计,该方法对表层土壤水分估计的精度0.04高于EnKF算法的精度0.05。当观测数据稀少时,DEnKF算法仍然可以得到较高精度的土壤水分估计,3层土壤水分的估计精度在0.02~0.05之间。     

AMSR-E亮温同化系统的数据分析方法研究

低频微波卫星观测信号由于其对土壤水分非常敏感,经常被同化到陆面模式来提高土壤水分和其它地表状态变量的模拟和预报。常用的同化算法主要利用统计学,优化理论等数学知识,对改进和理解模型的物理过程意义不大。通过研究发展一个数据分析方法,判断AMSR\|E亮温同化系统土壤水分的预报误差,为将来从物理角度定性分析提供基础。     

Soil moisture estimation through ASCAT and AMSR-E sensors: An intercomparison and validation study across Europe

Global soil moisture products retrieved from various remote sensing sensors are becoming readily available with a nearly daily temporal resolution. Active and passive microwave sensors are generally considered as the best technologies for retrieving soil moisture from space. The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth observing system (AMSR-E) on-board the Aqua satellite and the Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) on-board the MetOp (Meteorological Operational) satellite are among the sensors most widely used for soil moisture retrieval in the last years. However, due to differences in the spatial resolution, observation depths and measurement uncertainties, validation of satellite data with in situ observations and/or modelled data is not straightforward. In this study, a comprehensive assessment of the reliability of soil moisture estimations from the ASCAT and AMSR-E sensors is carried out by using observed and modelled soil moisture data over 17 sites located in 4 countries across Europe (Italy, Spain, France and Luxembourg). As regards satellite data, products generated by implementing three different algorithms with AMSR-E data are considered: (i) the Land Parameter Retrieval Model, LPRM, (ii) the standard NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) algorithm, and (iii) the Polarization Ratio Index, PRI. For ASCAT the Vienna University of Technology, TUWIEN, change detection algorithm is employed. An exponential filter is applied to approach root-zone soil moisture. Moreover, two different scaling strategies, based respectively on linear regression correction and Cumulative Density Function (CDF) matching, are employed to remove systematic differences between satellite and site-specific soil moisture data. Results are shown in terms of both relative soil moisture values (i.e., between 0 and 1) and anomalies from the climatological expectation.Among the three soil moisture products derived from AMSR-E sensor data, for most sites the highest correlation with observed and modelled data is found using the LPRM algorithm. Considering relative soil moisture values for an ~ 5 cm soil layer, the TUWIEN ASCAT product outperforms AMSR-E over all sites in France and central Italy while similar results are obtained in all other regions. Specifically, the average correlation coefficient with observed (modelled) data equals to 0.71 (0.74) and 0.62 (0.72) for ASCAT and AMSR-E-LPRM, respectively. Correlation values increase up to 0.81 (0.81) and 0.69 (0.77) for the two satellite products when exponential filtering and CDF matching approaches are applied. On the other hand, considering the anomalies, correlation values decrease but, more significantly, in this case ASCAT outperforms all the other products for all sites except the Spanish ones. Overall, the reliability of all the satellite soil moisture products was found to decrease with increasing vegetation density and to be in good accordance with previous studies. The results provide an overview of the ASCAT and AMSR-E reliability and robustness over different regions in Europe, thereby highlighting advantages and shortcomings for the effective use of these data sets for operational applications such as flood forecasting and numerical weather prediction.     

The North American ASTER Land Surface Emissivity Database (NAALSED) Version 2.0

Thermal Infrared (TIR) data are supplied by instruments on several satellite platforms including the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER), which was launched on the Terra satellite in 1999. ASTER has five bands in the TIR and a spatial resolution of 90 m. A mean seasonal, gridded, Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) database has been produced at 100 m spatial resolution using all the ASTER scenes acquired for the months of Jan-Mar (winter) and Jul-Sep (summer) over North America. Version 2.0 of the North American ASTER Land Surface Database (NAALSED) (http://emissivity.jpl.nasa.gov) has now been released and includes two key refinements designed to improve the accuracy of emissivities over water bodies and account for the effects of fractional vegetation cover. The water adjustment replaces ASTER emissivity values over inland water bodies with a measured library emissivity spectrum of distilled water, and then re-calculates the surface temperatures using a split-window algorithm. The accuracy of ASTER emissivities over vegetated surfaces is improved by applying a fractional vegetation cover adjustment (TES_Pv) to the ASTER Temperature Emissivity Separation (TES) calibration curve. Comparisons of NAALSED emissivity spectra with in-situ data measured over a grassland in Northern Texas resulted in a combined absolute difference for all five ASTER bands of 1.0% for the summer emissivity data, and 0.1% for the winter data—a 33-50% improvement over the original TES results.     

Validation of the North American ASTER Land Surface Emissivity Database (NAALSED) version 2.0 using pseudo-invariant sand dune sites

Knowledge of the Land Surface Emissivity (LSE) in the Thermal Infrared (TIR: 8-12 µm) part of the electromagnetic spectrum is essential to derive accurate Land Surface Temperatures (LSTs) from spaceborne TIR measurements. This study focuses on validation of the emissivity product in the North American ASTER Land Surface Emissivity Database (NAALSED) v2.0 — a mean seasonal, gridded emissivity product produced at 100 m spatial resolution using all Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) scenes from 2000 to 2008 over North America (http://emissivity.jpl.nasa.gov). The NAALSED emissivity product was validated over bare surfaces with laboratory measurements of sand samples collected at nine pseudo-invariant sand dune sites located in the western/southwestern USA. The nine sand dune sites cover a broad range of surface emissivities in the TIR. Results show that the absolute mean emissivity difference between NAALSED and the laboratory results for the nine validation sites and all five ASTER TIR bands was 0.016 (1.6%). This emissivity difference is equivalent to approximately a 1 K error in the land surface temperature for a material at 300 K in the TIR.     

中国江淮、黄淮地区陆面微波比辐射率的变化特征

陆面微波比辐射率较高且易变,造成陆面上反演降水以及其它大气参数较为困难。对于地表特征复杂的中国,陆面微波比辐射率的研究还很有限。通过利用Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)卫星上同步扫描的VIRS（红外和可见光）与TMI（微波）资料以及微波辐射传输模式反演了中国江淮、黄淮地区陆面微波比辐射率。然后,结合MODIS提供的地表类型数据,分析了江淮、黄淮地区不同地表微波比辐射率的时空变化特征。 结果表明该地区的农作物地表比辐射率最小,垂直与水平比辐射率极化差最大;而森林地表比辐射率最大,极化差最小。此外,不同地表的微波比辐射率昼夜变化明显,季节变化不明显。比辐射率估算误差中,地表温度、微波亮温和大气相对湿度3因子的准确计算对22 GHz和85 GHz的影响较为明显,对其它通道影响较小。对于小于85 GHz的通道,比辐射率估算精度受微波亮温的影响最为明显,地表温度其次,相对湿度最小;对于高频85 GHz,相对湿度的影响最明显,其次是微波亮温,最后是地表温度。     

Reliable estimation of evapotranspiration on agricultural fields predicted by the Priestley–Taylor model using soil moisture data from ground and remote sensing observations compared with the Common Land Model

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a crucial factor in understanding the hydrological cycle and is essential to many applications in hydrology, ecology and water resources management. However, reliable ET measurements and predictions for a range of temporal and spatial scales are difficult. This study focused on the comparison of ET estimates using a relatively simple model, the Priestley–Taylor (P-T) approach, and the physically based Common Land Model (CLM) using ground and remotely sensed soil moisture data as input. The results from both models were compared directly with hourly eddy covariance measurements at two agricultural field sites during the Soil Moisture–Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (SMACEX) in the corn soybean production region in the Upper Midwest, USA. The P-T model showed a significant overestimation of the potential ET compared to the measurements, with a root mean square error (RMSE) between 115 and 130 W m^–2. Actual ET was better predicted by the CLM, with the RMSE ranging between 50 and 75 W m^–2. However, actual ET from the P-T model constrained with a soil moisture dependency parameterization showed improved results when compared to the measurements, with a significantly reduced bias and RMSE values between 60 and 65 W m^–2. This study suggests that even with a simple semi-empirical ET model, similar performance in estimating actual ET for agricultural crops compared to more complex land surface–atmosphere models (i.e. the CLM) can be achieved when constrained with the soil moisture function. This suggests that remote sensing soil moisture estimates from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) and others such as the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission may be effective alternatives under certain environmental conditions for estimating actual ET of agricultural crops using a fairly simple algorithm.