scholarly journals Estimation of surface turbulent heat fluxes via variational assimilation of sequences of land surface temperatures from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites

Author(s):  
Tongren Xu ◽  
S. M. Bateni ◽  
S. Liang ◽  
D. Entekhabi ◽  
Kebiao Mao
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 2547-2564
Author(s):  
Georg Lackner ◽  
Daniel F. Nadeau ◽  
Florent Domine ◽  
Annie-Claude Parent ◽  
Gonzalo Leonardini ◽  
...  

AbstractRising temperatures in the southern Arctic region are leading to shrub expansion and permafrost degradation. The objective of this study is to analyze the surface energy budget (SEB) of a subarctic shrub tundra site that is subject to these changes, on the east coast of Hudson Bay in eastern Canada. We focus on the turbulent heat fluxes, as they have been poorly quantified in this region. This study is based on data collected by a flux tower using the eddy covariance approach and focused on snow-free periods. Furthermore, we compare our results with those from six Fluxnet sites in the Arctic region and analyze the performance of two land surface models, SVS and ISBA, in simulating soil moisture and turbulent heat fluxes. We found that 23% of the net radiation was converted into latent heat flux at our site, 35% was used for sensible heat flux, and about 15% for ground heat flux. These results were surprising considering our site was by far the wettest site among those studied, and most of the net radiation at the other Arctic sites was consumed by the latent heat flux. We attribute this behavior to the high hydraulic conductivity of the soil (littoral and intertidal sediments), typical of what is found in the coastal regions of the eastern Canadian Arctic. Land surface models overestimated the surface water content of those soils but were able to accurately simulate the turbulent heat flux, particularly the sensible heat flux and, to a lesser extent, the latent heat flux.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1065
Author(s):  
Elahe Tajfar ◽  
Sayed M. Bateni ◽  
Essam Heggy ◽  
Tongren Xu

This study investigated the feasibility of partitioning the available energy between sensible (H) and latent (LE) heat fluxes via variational assimilation of reference-level air temperature and specific humidity. For this purpose, sequences of reference-level air temperature and specific humidity were assimilated into an atmospheric boundary layer model (ABL) within a variational data assimilation (VDA) framework to estimate H and LE. The VDA approach was tested at six sites (namely, Arou, Audubon, Bondville, Brookings, Desert, and Willow Creek) with contrasting climatic and vegetative conditions. The unknowns of the VDA system were the neutral bulk heat transfer coefficient (CHN) and evaporative fraction (EF). EF estimates were found to agree well with observations in terms of magnitude and day-to-day fluctuations in wet/densely vegetated sites but degraded in dry/sparsely vegetated sites. Similarly, in wet/densely vegetated sites, the variations in the CHN estimates were found to be consistent with those of the leaf area index (LAI) while this consistency deteriorated in dry/sparely vegetated sites. The root mean square errors (RMSEs) of daily H and LE estimates at the Arou site (wet) were 25.43 (Wm−2) and 55.81 (Wm−2), which are respectively 57.6% and 45.4% smaller than those of 60.00 (Wm−2) and 102.21 (Wm−2) at the Desert site (dry). Overall, the results show that the VDA system performs well at wet/densely vegetated sites (e.g., Arou and Willow Creek), but its performance degrades at dry/slightly vegetated sites (e.g., Desert and Audubon). These outcomes show that the sequences of reference-level air temperature and specific humidity have more information on the partitioning of available energy between the sensible and latent heat fluxes in wet/densely vegetated sites than dry/slightly vegetated sites.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhong ◽  
Yaoming Ma ◽  
Zhongbo Su ◽  
Weiqiang Ma ◽  
Zeyong Hu ◽  
...  

<p>Estimation of land surface characteristic parameters and turbulent heat fluxes is important for energy and water cycle studies, especially on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), where the topography is unique and the land-atmosphere interactions are strong. The land surface heating conditions also directly influence the movement of atmospheric circulation. However, high temporal resolution information on the plateau-scale land surface parameters has lacked for a long time, which significantly limits the understanding of diurnal variations in land-atmosphere interactions. On the other hand, how to remove cloud effects for optical satellite images is another important research issue. Based on Chinese FY geostationary satellite data and other polar orbiting satellite data, the hourly land surface characteristic parameters and turbulent heat fluxes were estimated. A new cloud‐free time series of vegetation index data sets was reconstructed, and the vegetation density showed a general increasing trend along with a warming trend in the TP. The regions showing significant increases accounted for 7.63% of the total Tibetan territory. Downwelling shortwave and longwave radiation parameterization schemes were improved to derive all-sky radiation over the TP. The diurnal and seasonal cycles of the land surface parameters were clearly identified, and their spatial distribution was found to be consistent with the heterogeneous land surface conditions and the general hydrometeorological conditions of the TP.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Hongyu Li ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Ping Yue ◽  
Liang Zhang ◽  
Xiaochen Niu ◽  
...  

AbstractInvestigating the response of land surface energy exchange to key climatic signals such as the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is essential for understanding the intensive interactions in the Earth system. This study focuses on the summer monsoon transition zone (SMTZ) in China, which has a climate rather sensitive to the EASM activity, and examined the response of land surface energy exchange over the SMTZ to summer monsoon activity. A flux evaluation of five reanalysis/modeling data sets indicates that JRA-55(the Japane 55-year Reanalysis) reasonably represents interannual variations of surface heat fluxes over the SMTZ. The EASM activity is accurately identified in the SMTZ by introducing a monsoon temporal duration index (MTDI), which presents climate variations of summer rainfall and EASM activity better than commonly used summer monsoon indexes. Based on MTDI and long-term flux data sets, it was found that the interannual fluctuation of the EASM intensively controls surface energy partitioning and turbulent heat exchange but has a weak impact on radiative processes over the SMTZ. Furthermore, surface sensible and latent heat fluxes significantly responded to the influential period of the summer monsoon, exhibiting approximately quadratic/logarithmic relationships with the MTDI. More prominent interannual variabilities of turbulent heat fluxes were observed in weak summer monsoon years, during which an active interaction between surface energy exchange and a warming and drying climate occurred. An ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) analysis confirms that EASM activity dominates the quasi-biennial and multidecadal variations of turbulent heat fluxes over the SMTZ, which may be achieved by the transport of tropical quasi-biennial and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) signals to the mid-latitudes of East Asia. The expected intensification of summer monsoon activity in the future may induce acceleration of energy and hydrological cycle and exert a substantial impact on the availability of water and the ecosystem stability over the SMTZ.


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