Can an energy balance model provide additional constraints on how to close the energy imbalance?

Wohlfahrt, Georg; Widmoser, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.10.006

Can an energy balance model provide additional constraints on how to close the energy imbalance?

Journal Article · Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 EST 2013 · Agricultural and Forest Meteorology

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.10.006· OSTI ID:1623631

Wohlfahrt, Georg ^[1]; Widmoser, Peter ^[2]

Univ. of Innsbruck (Austria). Inst. for Ecology; DOE/OSTI
Univ. of Kiel (Germany). Ecology Centre. Hydrology and Water resources Mangement Dept.

Elucidating the causes for the energy imbalance, i.e. the phenomenon that eddy covariance latent and sensible heat fluxes fall short of available energy, is an outstanding problem in micrometeorology. This paper tests the hypothesis that the full energy balance, through incorporation of additional independent measurements which determine the driving forces of and resistances to energy transfer, provides further insights into the causes of the energy imbalance and additional constraints on energy balance closure options. Eddy covariance and auxiliary data from three different biomes were used to test five contrasting closure scenarios. The main result of our study is that except for nighttime, when fluxes were low and noisy, the full energy balance generally did not contain enough information to allow further insights into the causes of the imbalance and to constrain energy balance closure options. Up to four out of the five tested closure scenarios performed similarly and in up to 53% of all cases all ofthe tested closure scenarios resulted in plausible energy balance values. Our approach may though provide a sensible consistency check for eddy covariance energy flux measurements.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Univ. of Nevada, Reno, NV (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-03ER63651

OSTI ID:: 1623631

Journal Information:: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Journal Name: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Journal Issue: C Vol. 169; ISSN 0168-1923

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Diurnal Variations of the Flux Imbalance Over Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Landscapes Zhou, Yanzhao; Li, Dan; Liu, Heping Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Vol. 168, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-018-0358-2	journal	May 2018
The Effects of Surface Heterogeneity Scale on the Flux Imbalance under Free Convection Zhou, Yanzhao; Li, Dan; Li, Xin Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres https://doi.org/10.1029/2018jd029550	journal	August 2019
Mechanistic links between underestimated CO ₂ fluxes and non-closure of the surface energy balance in a semi-arid sagebrush ecosystem Gao, Zhongming; Liu, Heping; Missik, Justine E. C. Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 14, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab082d	journal	April 2019
Technical note: An experimental set-up to measure latent and sensible heat fluxes from (artificial) plant leaves Schymanski, Stan; Breitenstein, Daniel; Or, Dani ETH Zurich https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000190353	text	January 2017
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