Rainfall as proxy for evapotranspiration predictions

Abstract. In this work, we evaluated the relationship between evapotranspiration and precipitation, based on the data recently made available by the Brazilian Meteorological Institute. ETP tend to be lower in rainy periods and vice-versa. This relationship was assessed both in physical and statistical ways, identifying the contribution of each explaining variable of ETP. We derived regression equations between monthly rainfall and ETP, which can be useful in studies where ETP time series are not available, such as reservoir design, irrigation management and flow forecast.