Monthly Actual Evapotranspiration for Australia at 30-Meter Resolution

Monthly actual evapotranspiration (AET) estimates for Australia at a 30-meter spatial resolution, using the CMRSET algorithm. It is generated by blending Landsat, Sentinel-2, MODIS, and VIIRS satellite data to create continuous, gap-free time series. The data supports water balance modeling for wetlands, paddocks, and catchments across the continent.

Use Cases

• Model the water balance for specific catchments or groundwater systems using high-resolution, monthly AET estimates.
• Monitor irrigation water use efficiency at the paddock or farm scale by analyzing temporal AET patterns.
• Estimate water needs for ground-water dependent ecosystems (GDEs) using spatially detailed AET data.
• Calibrate hydrological models with gap-free, high-frequency AET data derived from multiple satellite sources.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution of 30 meters enables analysis at the field or paddock scale.
• Monthly temporal frequency and gap-free continuity due to multi-sensor data blending.
• Covers the entire continent of Australia, providing national-scale coverage.
• Algorithm validation is documented in a peer-reviewed journal publication (Guerschman et al., 2022).

Limitations

• The dataset's accuracy is dependent on the underlying meteorological data and satellite sensor inputs.
• As a raster dataset, it requires specialized geospatial tools (e.g., GIS software) for analysis, unlike tabular data.
• The long-term consistency may be affected by changes in the constituent satellite missions over time.

Provenance

Source

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery

Collection Method

Generated using the CMRSET algorithm applied to reflective remotely sensed indices from Landsat, Sentinel-2, MODIS, and VIIRS, blended with potential evapotranspiration calculated from Bureau of Meteorology gridded meteorological data.

Freshness

Data product version 2.2 is recommended; the metadata record was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

Australia