Applications of a thermal-based two-source energy balance model using Priestley-Taylor approach for surface temperature partitioning under advective conditions

•Refined vegetation and soil temperature partitioning algorithm used by the TSEB model.•Refined TSEB model requires surface soil moisture inputs.•Model output of evapotranspiration generally more accurate using refined TSEB under advective conditions.•Model output of component transpiration and evaporation were evaluated with measurements

In this study ground measured soil and vegetation component temperatures and composite temperature from a high spatial resolution thermal camera and a network of thermal-IR sensors collected in an irrigated maize field and in an irrigated cotton field are used to assess and refine the component temperature partitioning approach in the Two-Source Energy Balance (TSEB) model. A refinement to TSEB using a non-iterative approach based on the application of the Priestley-Taylor formulation for surface temperature partitioning and estimating soil evaporation from soil moisture observations under advective conditions (TSEB-A) was developed. This modified TSEB formulation improved the agreement between observed and modeled soil and vegetation temperatures. In addition, the TSEB-A model output of evapotranspiration (ET) and the components evaporation (E), transpiration (T) when compared to ground observations using the stable isotopic method and eddy covariance (EC) technique from the HiWATER experiment and with microlysimeters and a large monolithic weighing lysimeter from the BEAREX08 experiment showed good agreement. Difference between the modeled and measured ET measurements were less than 10% and 20% on a daytime basis for HiWATER and BEAREX08 data sets, respectively. The TSEB-A model was found to accurately reproduce the temporal dynamics of E, T and ET over a full growing season under the advective conditions existing for these irrigated crops located in arid/semi-arid climates. With satellite data this TSEB-A modeling framework could potentially be used as a tool for improving water use efficiency and conservation practices in water limited regions. However, TSEB-A requires soil moisture information which is not currently available routinely from satellite at the field scale.