2014 update of GOES PET and RET data sets for Florida

In Florida, potential (PET) and reference (RET) evapotranspiration are used in a number of water-resource planning and management activities including estimating water use for permitting and planning, modeling surface water, groundwater, and wetlands dynamics, and characterizing the transport of pollutants through watersheds and aquifers. Both PET and RET estimates require direct measurements of incoming solar radiation. Because the Florida ground-based solar radiation network is extremely sparse from 1991 to present, this project makes PET and RET estimates using solar radiation obtained from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). The proposed effort provides solar radiation, potential evapotranspiration, and reference evapotranspiration estimates at a 2 km spatial scale and a daily time scale from 1995 to 2004 for the entire state of Florida. All supporting datasets are transferred to the U.S. Geological Survey and are publicly available via a USGS web portal.