Time series analysis of reference crop evapotranspiration for Bokaro District, Jharkhand, India

Evapotranspiration is the one of the major role playing element in water cycle. More accurate measurement and forecasting of Evapotranspiration would enable more efficient water resources management. This study, is therefore, particularly focused on evapotranspiration modelling and forecasting, since forecasting would provide better information for optimal water resources management. There are numerous techniques of evapotranspiration forecasting that include autoregressive (AR) and moving average (MA), autoregressive moving average (ARMA), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), Thomas Feiring, etc. Out of these models ARIMA model has been found to be more suitable for analysis and forecasting of hydrological events. Therefore, in this study ARIMA models have been used for forecasting of mean monthly reference crop evapotranspiration by stochastic analysis. The data series of 102 years i.e. 1224 months of Bokaro District were used for analysis and forecasting. Different order of ARIMA model was selected on the basis of autocorrelation function (ACF) and partial autocorrelation (PACF) of data series. Maximum likelihood method was used for determining the parameters of the models. To see the statistical parameter of model, best fitted model is ARIMA (0, 1, 4) (0, 1, 1)12.