Time series evapotranspiration estimation based on MODIS/Terra satellite data over South Asia

Recent years, the human activity and climate change greatly threaten the water resource security in South Asia. As an important parameter in land surface, evapotranspiration (ET) is essential to understand water cycle, estimate surface runoff and groundwater, and manage water resource. Satellite based ET derivation has been applied widely in many studies and become a popular way to estimate ET. In this study, time series ET in South Asia was derived with SEBS model with MODIS/Terra satellite data and field site observation data for the period March 2008-June 2008. Due to the lack of field flux observation, the derived ET was cross-validated by MOD16 ET product. The analysis results suggested that the proposed method was able to capture the reasonable spatial and temporal variation of ET more effectively than MOD16 product.