Artificial neural network models of daily pan evaporation

Artificial neural network (ANN) models are proposed as an alternative approach of evaporation estimation for Lake Egirdir. This study has three objectives: (1) to develop ANN models to estimate daily pan evaporation from measured meteorological data; (2) to compare the ANN models to the Penman model; and (3) to evaluate the potential of ANN models. Meteorological data from Lake Egirdir consisting of 490 daily records from 2001 to 2002 are used to develop the model for daily pan evaporation estimation. The measured meteorological variables include daily observations of air and water temperature, sunshine hours, solar radiation, air pressure, relative humidity, and wind speed. The results of the Penman method and ANN models are compared to pan evaporation values. The comparison shows that there is better agreement between the ANN estimations and measurements of daily pan evaporation than for other model.