Global reference evapotranspiration for food-security monitoring (ver. 2.3, April 2026)
The data are a long-term (1980-present), daily reanalysis of reference evapotranspiration, covering the globe at a spatial resolution of 0.625° Longitude x 0.5° Latitude. Reference evapotranspiration is a measure of evaporative demand, or the "thirst of the atmosphere"--basically how much moisture from the surface could evaporate into overpassing air, assuming (i) that enough water is available to evaporate and (ii) the surface is covered with a specific reference crop that completely shades the ground (some other conditions also apply). For this dataset, reference evapotranspiration is derived from the daily implementation of the Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration equation (Monteith, 1965) as codified in the FAO-56 report (FAO, 1998), which is the international standard for reference evapotranspiration estimation. The equation is driven by data from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2; Gelaro et al., 2017). The MERRA-2 input data are at a spatial resolution of 0.5 deg lat x 0.625 deg long; the reference evapotranspiration output data are at the same spatial resolution. There are two outputs, one for each reference crop: ETos is the reference evapotranspiration from a short crop (0.12-m grass); ETrs is the reference evapotranspiration from a long-crop (0.5-m alfalfa).
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Complete Metadata
| @type | dcat:Dataset |
|---|---|
| accessLevel | public |
| bureauCode |
[ "010:12" ] |
| contactPoint |
{ "fn": "Mike Hobbins", "@type": "vcard:Contact", "hasEmail": "mailto:mike.hobbins@noaa.gov" } |
| description | The data are a long-term (1980-present), daily reanalysis of reference evapotranspiration, covering the globe at a spatial resolution of 0.625° Longitude x 0.5° Latitude. Reference evapotranspiration is a measure of evaporative demand, or the "thirst of the atmosphere"--basically how much moisture from the surface could evaporate into overpassing air, assuming (i) that enough water is available to evaporate and (ii) the surface is covered with a specific reference crop that completely shades the ground (some other conditions also apply). For this dataset, reference evapotranspiration is derived from the daily implementation of the Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration equation (Monteith, 1965) as codified in the FAO-56 report (FAO, 1998), which is the international standard for reference evapotranspiration estimation. The equation is driven by data from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2; Gelaro et al., 2017). The MERRA-2 input data are at a spatial resolution of 0.5 deg lat x 0.625 deg long; the reference evapotranspiration output data are at the same spatial resolution. There are two outputs, one for each reference crop: ETos is the reference evapotranspiration from a short crop (0.12-m grass); ETrs is the reference evapotranspiration from a long-crop (0.5-m alfalfa). |
| distribution |
[ { "@type": "dcat:Distribution", "title": "Digital Data", "format": "XML", "accessURL": "https://doi.org/10.5066/P9IIQMV1", "mediaType": "application/http", "description": "Landing page for access to the data" }, { "@type": "dcat:Distribution", "title": "Original Metadata", "format": "XML", "mediaType": "text/xml", "description": "The metadata original format", "downloadURL": "https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/metadata/USGS.62548706d34e21f8276f4299.xml" } ] |
| identifier | http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/USGS_62548706d34e21f8276f4299 |
| keyword |
[ "USGS:62548706d34e21f8276f4299", "climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere", "food-security", "geoscientificInformation", "long-term daily product", "reference evapotranspiration" ] |
| modified | 2026-05-11T00:00:00Z |
| publisher |
{ "name": "U.S. Geological Survey", "@type": "org:Organization" } |
| spatial | -180.0000, -90.0000, 179.6875, 90.0000 |
| theme |
[ "geospatial" ] |
| title | Global reference evapotranspiration for food-security monitoring (ver. 2.3, April 2026) |
