The sustainability of irrigated agriculture depends primarily on the efficient management of irrigation in order to increase the crop primary productivity in a given site. The efficiency in water use can be enhanced by the irrigation schedule adopted, being mainly governed by the climatic conditions. The irrigation planning and the decision making is a function of the knowledge of atmospheric demand, which might be expressed by the reference evapotranspiration (ETo). In general, almost all the ETo estimation methods reported by the literature refers to daily values, including in such situation the night evaporation losses, which must be taken into account only during some days after rain or irrigation. In the current study a corrected method for estimating ETo, based on the local energy balance, was proposed from meteorological data monitored in an automated weather station throughout light periods. To validate the current methodology a set of climatic data observed in Piracicaba, SP, Brazil, as well as lysimetric measurements collected at the "Areião" Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of São Paulo - ESALQ/USP - were used for such a purpose. Regression analyses have revealed that the proposed method showed excellent results when compared with Penman-Monteith method and also with measurements made by weighting lysimeters, given the high coefficient of determination values obtained, being able to be recommended, however, in studies for assessment of crop water use at several sites.
energy balance; modeling; atmospheric demand
