Abstract
In Botswana, the rate of evaporation over open water surfaces is high because the country is characterised by hot and semi arid climatic conditions. The purpose of the study is to investigate the correlation between Botswana's monthly maximum temperature and evaporation and between monthly maximum wind speed and evaporation, for the stations Gaborone, Francistown and Maun and to fit transfer function-noise models between the highly correlated elements. The data were obtained from the Botswana Department of Meteorological Services. Cross correlation analysis revealed that for the selected weather stations, monthly maximum evaporation is much more strongly correlated to monthly maximum temperature than to monthly maximum wind speed. Monthly maximum temperature and evaporation were modelled with transfer function-noise models. The results of the study are crucial mainly to those in water management, agriculture and other similar industries.
Highlights
An unending circulation of water within the atmosphere starts with large quantities of water evaporating from water bodies (Ahrens, 1994)
Evaporation and the meteorological variables that affect it are of interest to various applications such as in water resources management, agriculture and climatology
The present study found that out of the four main meteorological elements that affect evaporation, only air temperature and wind speed had reliable data
Summary
An unending circulation of water within the atmosphere starts with large quantities of water evaporating from water bodies (Ahrens, 1994). Evaporation depends on several factors, which include meteorological variables (Xu and Singh, 1998). Evaporation and the meteorological variables that affect it are of interest to various applications such as in water resources management, agriculture and climatology. Evaporation from waterbodies accounts for most of the moisture in the atmosphere (≈ 90%), while the remaining 10% is accounted for by transpiration and sublimation (Moran and Morgan, 1986; Ahrens, 1994; AMPJ, 2016). In regions with little rainfall, evaporation losses contribute considerably to the decrease of water levels in water bodies such as dams (Kumar et al, 2013)
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