Direct Measurements and New Mathematical Methods to Estimate the Pond Evaporation of the French Midwest

Abstract

Despite many scientific papers published around the world on the evaporation of water bodies, few detailed evaporation studies exist for ponds, especially the ponds of humid areas like the French Midwest. Two full years of daily evaporation measurements on two different types of ponds were carried out using a transparent floating evaporation pan. A comparison between a class A evaporation pan and the transparent floating evaporation pan shows that the latter has almost no influence on the water temperature. As a consequence, the measurements taken by this evaporation pan were used to evaluate the reliability of 18 different mathematical methods. These mathematical methods use climate data provided by a weather station installed at the edge of the studied ponds to calculate evaporation. The comparison between measured and calculated evaporation shows that the new empirical formula of Aldomany is the best formula that we can use to estimate the ponds evaporation.