Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net 1812-2108 1812-2116 6 1 2009 10.5194/hessd-6-697-2009 http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/6/697/2009/ http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/6/697/2009/hessd-6-697-2009.html http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/6/697/2009/hessd-6-697-2009.pdf 697 728 2009-02-05 Simulation of the soil water balance of wheat using daily weather forecast messages to estimate the reference evapotranspiration J. Cai Y. Liu D. Xu P. Paredes L. S. Pereira Department of Irrigation & Drainage, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100044, China Agricultural Engineering Research Center, Institute of Agronomy, Technical University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal Aiming at developing real time water balance modelling for irrigation scheduling, this study assesses the accuracy of using the reference evapotranspiration (ETo) estimated from daily weather forecast messages (ETo,WF) as model input. A previous study applied to eight locations in China (Cai et al., 2007) has shown the feasibility for estimating ETo,WF with the FAO Penmam-Monteith equation using daily forecasts of maximum and minimum temperature, cloudiness and wind speed. In this study, the global radiation is estimated from the difference between the forecasted maximum and minimum temperatures, the actual vapour pressure is estimated from the forecasted minimum temperature and the wind speed is obtained from converting the common wind scales into wind speed. The present application refers to a location in the North China Plain, Daxing, for the wheat crop seasons of 2005–2006 and 2006–2007. Results comparing ETo,WF with ETo computed with observed data (ETo, obs) have shown favourable goodness of fitting indicators and a RMSE of 0.77 mm d−1. ETo was underestimated in the first year and overestimated in the second. The water balance model ISAREG was calibrated and validated for both years using ETo, obs by comparing the predicted and observed soil water content relative to various irrigation treatments. The calibrated crop parameters were used in the simulations of the same treatments using ETo,WF as model input. 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