Farmers and irrigation system operators make real-time irrigation decisions based on a range of factors including crop water requirement and short-term weather forecasts of rainfall and air temperature. Forecasts of reference crop evapotranspiration (ET O ) can be calculated from numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecasts and ET O has the advantage of being more directly relevant to crop water requirements than air temperature. This paper aims to discuss the forecasting ability of ET O using outputs from the Bureau of Meteorology's operational NWP forecasts derived from the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator -Global (ACCESS-G). The daily ET O forecasts were evaluated for the Shepparton Irrigation Area in Victoria. Forecast performance for ET O was quantified using the root mean squared error (RMSE), coefficient of determination (r 2 ), anomaly correlation coefficient (ACC) and mean square skill score (MSSS). Lead times of daily ET O forecasts up to 9 days were compared against ET O calculated using hourly observations from the Shepparton airport automatic weather station. It was found that forecasting daily ET O was better than using the long-term monthly mean ET O for lead times up to 6 days and beyond that the longterm monthly mean was better. The average MSSS of ET O forecasts varied between 64% and 4 % for 1 to 6 day lead times, respectively. The most influential forecast weather variable for daily ET O forecasts was mean wind speed, air temperature and incoming solar radiation for 1, 2-3 and 4-9 day lead times respectively. Also, it was found that the forecast performance for incoming solar radiation and mean wind speed was relatively poor compared with the air and dew point temperatures.
Water demand prediction by end-use at an appropriate spatial and temporal resolution is essential for planning water supply systems that will supply water from a diversified set of sources on a fit-for-purpose basis. Understanding seasonal, daily and sub-daily water demand including peak demand by end-uses is an essential planning requirement to implement a fit-for-purpose water supply strategy. Studies in the literature assume that all indoor water uses except evaporative cooler water use are weather independent and do not exhibit seasonal variability. This paper presents an analysis undertaken to examine seasonal variability of residential water end-uses. The analysis was repeated using two sets of data to ensure the validity of findings. The study shows that shower water use is significantly different between winter and summer, in addition to irrigation, evaporative cooler and pool water end-uses, while other water end-uses are not. Weather is shown to be a significant determinant of shower water use; in particular it affects shower duration which increases with lower temperature. Further analysis on
OPEN ACCESSWater 2015, 7
203shower water use suggests that it is driven by behavioural factors in addition to weather, thus providing useful insights to improve detailed end-use water demand predictions.
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