SEBAL quantifies the energy balance using satellite data as an input. Land surface characteristics such as surface albedo, leaf area index, vegetation index and surface temperature are derived from satellite imagery. In addition to satellite images, the SEBAL model requires meteorological data, such as wind speed, humidity, solar radiation and air temperature. It uses meteorological data from the moment of the recording of the satellite data to solve the 'instantaneous' energy balance, and uses extrapolation to calculate daily evapotranspiration. Using a time series of satellite and meteorological data, periodic cumulative (e.g. weekly, monthly, yearly) evapotranspiration data can be calculated.
