Calibration and evaluation of Hargreaves-Samani equation for estimating reference evapotranspiration: A case study in the Amu Darya River Basin, Central Asia

Study region: Amu Darya River Basin (ADRB), Central Asia. Study focus: Reference-evapotranspiration (ETo) is the most prominent variable for agriculture water-resource management. The Penman-Monteith (PM) equation has been accepted as universal-standard for estimating ETo but it requires extensive climatic-variables. The PM alternative Hargreaves-Samani (HS) equation inadequately estimates ETo with an average error of RMSE 1.84 mm/day, NSE 0.27, and MAE 0.61 mm/day, respectively, in the ADRB. New hydrological insight for the region: The present study proposes the calibration of original HSequation based on actual vapor pressure and linear regression to estimate daily ETo at 114 meteorological stations in the ADRB. The locally-calibrated HS-equation coefficient (C) was found variated-widely across the different climatic-conditions and months, ranging from 0.0025 to 0.0186, due to hyper-aridity conditions in the study area. Compared with proposed methods by other studies, the modified-HS equation and empirical-coefficient using newly-proposed variable leads to a significant reduction of the average root means square error and mean absolute error by about 55 % and 52 %, respectively, demonstrates their feasibility and accuracy in the ADRB, Central Asia. In-addition, the modified-HS-equation based on climatic zones were found to be more accurate and comprehensive than geographical localizations. The modified-HS equation and empirical-coefficient using newly-proposed variable and approach is suitable to estimate ETo in a data scarce region (e.g., ADRB), when only temperatures, solar radiation and vapor pressure data are available.