Wednesday, 22 May 2002
Evaluation of a simple method to estimate surface heat fluxes for a midwestern deciduous forest, USA
An evaluation of the de Bruin and Holtslag (1982)/Holtslag and van Ulden (1983) model to predict latent and sensible heat fluxes at the Morgan-Monroe State Forest AmeriFlux site for four years (1998 - 2001) is presented. All components of the surface energy balance are measured or determined at the site. Careful attention was directed to all components of the soil-canopy-air heat storage term. A simple, hysteresis-scheme to model change in heat storage was developed and evaluated, and shown to perform well. Energy balance closure was forced before model coefficients were derived and the model evaluated. Coefficients (alpha and beta) were determined on an approximately 10-day basis using observations from 1999. These coefficients were then used to calculate latent and sensible heat fluxes for 1998, 2000 and 2001. Initial results show that modeled fluxes compare well with observations. This simple approach has many applications, including the estimation of the energy balance over different surfaces and environments, and to fill gaps in flux data where observations are missing.
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