Estimating water surface energy balance from a single depth temperature measurement

Weather and climate of the coupled land-ocean-atmosphere system are driven by the partitioning of solar energy over the Earth's surface. The evolution of water surface temperature implicitly contains the signature of energy partitioning that it can be used to diagnose the surface energy balance. In this study, we developed a novel numerical scheme by combining Green's function approach and linear stability analysis for the estimation of the water surface energy balance using the water temperature at a single depth. Compared to land surface, energy partitioning over water surface is more complicated due to penetration and absorption of solar radiation in the water body. The proposed method is capable of constructing water surface temperature and predicting all surface energy budgets with physically-based schemes. Evaluation against in-situ measurements and the maximum entropy production method, demonstrates that this approach is robust and of good accuracy. The novel approach, when coupled to climatic models, will enhance numerical predictability of water-land-atmospheric interactions with improved water surface energy balance.