Cross flow mechanical cooling towers, widely spreads all over the south region of Tunisia are used for cooling geothermal water for agriculture and domestic ends. These towers are sized empirically and present several problems in regard to operation and electrical energy consumption. This work aims to study the thermal behaviour of this type of cooling towers through a developed mathematical model considering the variation of the water mass flow rate inside the tower. The analysis of the water and air temperatures distribution along the cooling tower had underlined the negative convection phenomenon at a certain height of the tower. This analysis has shown also that the difference in water temperature between the inlet and the outlet of the tower is much higher than the one of air due to the dominance of the evaporative potential compared to the convective one. In addition, the variations of the air humidity along the cooling tower and the quantity of evaporated water have been investigated. The loss of water by evaporation is found to be 5.1% of the total quantity of water feeding the cooling tower. Interesting future prospects are expected for validation of the developed model to optimize the operating of the cooling tower. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.