Minimum weather data requirements for estimating reference evapotranspiration

The International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have proposed using the Penman-Monteith method as the standard method for estimating reference evapotranspiration (ET0), and for evaluating other methods. The FAO-56 Penman-Monteith (FAO-56 PM) method requires the numerous weather data that are not available in the most of the stations. The objectives of this study were: first, to estimate errors that can arise if some weather data are not available and have to be estimated; second, to compare the FAO-56 PM ET0 values computed under various levels of data availability; and third, to determine minimum weather data requirements for estimating ET0 without decreasing the acceptable accuracy. For this study, full weather data sets were collected from six humid weather stations from Serbia (Southeast Europe).The main conclusion is that the minimum and maximum air temperature and "local default" value of wind speed are the minimum data requirements necessary to apply the FAO-56 PM method in humid climate