scholarly journals Spatio-Temporal Trends of Surface Energy Budget in Tibet from Satellite Remote Sensing Observations and Reanalysis Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 256
Author(s):  
Usman Mazhar ◽  
Shuanggen Jin ◽  
Wentao Duan ◽  
Muhammad Bilal ◽  
Md. Arfan Ali ◽  
...  

Being the highest and largest land mass of the earth, the Tibetan Plateau has a strong impact on the Asian climate especially on the Asian monsoon. With high downward solar radiation, the Tibetan Plateau is a climate sensitive region and the main water source for many rivers in South and East Asia. Although many studies have analyzed energy fluxes in the Tibetan Plateau, a long-term detailed spatio-temporal variability of all energy budget parameters is not clear for understanding the dynamics of the regional climate change. In this paper, satellite remote sensing and reanalysis data are used to quantify spatio-temporal trends of energy budget parameters, net radiation, latent heat flux, and sensible heat flux over the Tibetan Plateau from 2001 to 2019. The validity of both data sources is analyzed from in situ ground measurements of the FluxNet micrometeorological tower network, which verifies that both datasets are valid and reliable. It is found that the trend of net radiation shows a slight increase. The latent heat flux increases continuously, while the sensible heat flux decreases continuously throughout the study period over the Tibetan Plateau. Varying energy fluxes in the Tibetan plateau will affect the regional hydrological cycle. Satellite LE product observation is limited to certain land covers. Thus, for larger spatial areas, reanalysis data is a more appropriate choice. Normalized difference vegetation index proves a useful indicator to explain the latent heat flux trend. Despite the reduction of sensible heat, the atmospheric temperature increases continuously resulting in the warming of the Tibetan Plateau. The opposite trend of sensible heat flux and air temperature is an interesting and explainable phenomenon. It is also concluded that the surface evaporative cooling is not the indicator of atmospheric cooling/warming. In the future, more work shall be done to explain the mechanism which involves the complete heat cycle in the Tibetan Plateau.

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 5659-5677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Q. Shi ◽  
S. Liang

Abstract. Estimations from meteorological stations over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) indicate that since the 1980s the surface-sensible heat flux has been decreasing continuously, and modeling studies suggest that such changes are likely linked to the weakening of the East Asian Monsoon through exciting Rossby wave trains. However, the spatial and temporal variations in the surface-sensible and latent heat fluxes over the entire TP remain unknown. This study aims to characterize the spatial and seasonal variability of the surface-sensible and latent heat fluxes at 0.5° over the TP from 1984 to 2007 by synthesizing multiple data sources including ground measurements, reanalysis products, and remote-sensing products. The root mean square errors (RMSEs) from cross validation are 14.3 Wm−2 and 10.3 Wm−2 for the monthly fused sensible and latent heat fluxes, respectively. The fused sensible and latent heat-flux anomalies are consistent with those estimated from meteorological stations, and the uncertainties of the fused data are also discussed. The associations among the fused sensible and latent heat fluxes and the related surface anomalies such as mean temperature, temperature range, snow cover, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in addition to atmospheric anomalies such as cloud cover and water vapor show seasonal dependence, suggest that the land–biosphere–atmosphere interactions over the TP could display nonuniform feedbacks to the climate changes. It would be interesting to disentangle the drivers and responses of the surface-sensible and latent heat-flux anomalies over the TP in future research from evidences of modeling results.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 30349-30405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Q. Shi ◽  
S. Liang

Abstract. Estimations from meteorological stations indicate that the surface sensible heat flux over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has been decreasing continuously since 1980s, and modeling studies suggest that such changes are likely linked to the weakening of the East Asian Monsoon through exciting Rossby wave trains. However, the spatial and temporal variations in the surface sensible and latent heat fluxes over the entire TP remain unknown. This study aims to characterize the monthly surface sensible and latent heat fluxes at 0.5° over the TP from 1984 to 2007 by synthesizing multiple data sources including ground measurements, reanalysis products, and remote sensing products. The root mean square errors (RMSEs) from cross-validation are 11.1 W m−2 and 17.8 W m−2 for the monthly fused sensible and latent heat fluxes, respectively. The fused sensible and latent heat flux anomalies are consistent with those estimated from meteorological stations, and the uncertainties of the fused data are also discussed. The annual sensible heat flux over the TP is shown to be decreasing by −1.1 W m−2 deacade−1 with dominant decreasing in summer (−3.9 W m−2 deacade−1), while the latent heat flux shows a decrease (increase) in spring (autumn) but at a magnitude less than that of the sensible heat flux. Such decreased tendency of the fused sensible and latent heat flux over the TP is consistent to the weakened East Asian Monsoon as well as the solar dimming. The associations among sensible and latent heat fluxes and the related surface anomalies such as mean temperature, temperature range, snow cover, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in addition to atmospheric anomalies such as cloud cover and water vapor show seasonal dependence, suggest that the land–biosphere–atmosphere interactions over the TP could display nonuniform feedbacks to the climate changes. It would be interesting to disentangle the drivers and responses of the surface sensible and latent heat flux anomalies over the TP in future research from evidences of modeling results.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
David O. Benson ◽  
Paul A. Dirmeyer

AbstractIncreased heatwave frequency across the United States has led to the need for improved predictability of heatwave events. A detailed understanding of land-atmosphere interactions and the relationship between soil moisture and temperature extremes could provide useful information for prediction. This study identifies, for many locations, a threshold of soil moisture below which there is an increase in the sensitivity of atmospheric temperature to declining soil moisture. This shift to a hypersensitive regime causes the atmosphere to be more susceptible to atmospherically driven heatwave conditions. The soil moisture breakpoint where the regime shift occurs is estimated using segmented regression applied to observations and reanalysis data. It is shown that as the soil gets drier, there is a concomitant change in the rate of decrease in latent heat flux and increase in sensible heat flux leading to a strong positive feedback of increased air temperature near the surface, which further dries out the soil. Central, southwestern and southeastern parts of the US seem to have regions of clear regime shifts, while the eastern part of the US generally does not get dry enough to reveal significant breakpoints. Sensible heat flux is seen to be a primary driver of this increased temperature sensitivity aided by the drop in latent heat flux. An investigation of flux tower sites verifies the breakpoint-flux relationships found in reanalysis data. Accurate estimation of these breakpoints can contribute to improved heatwave prediction.


2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (12) ◽  
pp. 2474-2486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Yang ◽  
Jun Qin ◽  
Xiaofeng Guo ◽  
Degang Zhou ◽  
Yaoming Ma

Abstract To clarify the thermal forcing of the Tibetan Plateau, long-term coarse-temporal-resolution data from the China Meteorological Administration have been widely used to estimate surface sensible heat flux by bulk methods in many previous studies; however, these estimates have seldom been evaluated against observations. This study at first evaluates three widely used bulk schemes against Tibet instrumental flux data. The evaluation shows that large uncertainties exist in the heat flux estimated by these schemes; in particular, upward heat fluxes in winter may be significantly underestimated, because diurnal variations of atmospheric stability were not taken into account. To improve the estimate, a new method is developed to disaggregate coarse-resolution meteorological data to hourly according to statistical relationships derived from high-resolution experimental data, and then sensible heat flux is estimated from the hourly data by a well-validated flux scheme. Evaluations against heat flux observations in summer and against net radiation observations in winter indicate that the new method performs much better than previous schemes, and therefore it provides a robust basis for quantifying the Tibetan surface energy budget.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3221-3233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Behrendt ◽  
Volker Wulfmeyer ◽  
Christoph Senff ◽  
Shravan Kumar Muppa ◽  
Florian Späth ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present the first measurement of the sensible heat flux (H) profile in the convective boundary layer (CBL) derived from the covariance of collocated vertical-pointing temperature rotational Raman lidar and Doppler wind lidar measurements. The uncertainties of the H measurements due to instrumental noise and limited sampling are also derived and discussed. Simultaneous measurements of the latent heat flux profile (L) and other turbulent variables were obtained with the combination of water-vapor differential absorption lidar (WVDIAL) and Doppler lidar. The case study uses a measurement example from the HOPE (HD(CP)2 Observational Prototype Experiment) campaign, which took place in western Germany in 2013 and presents a cloud-free well-developed quasi-stationary CBL. The mean boundary layer height zi was at 1230 m above ground level. The results show – as expected – positive values of H in the middle of the CBL. A maximum of (182±32) W m−2, with the second number for the noise uncertainty, is found at 0.5 zi. At about 0.7 zi, H changes sign to negative values above. The entrainment flux was (-62±27) W m−2. The mean sensible heat flux divergence in the observed part of the CBL above 0.3 zi was −0.28 W m−3, which corresponds to a warming of 0.83 K h−1. The L profile shows a slight positive mean flux divergence of 0.12 W m−3 and an entrainment flux of (214±36) W m−2. The combination of H and L profiles in combination with variance and other turbulent parameters is very valuable for the evaluation of large-eddy simulation (LES) results and the further improvement and validation of turbulence parameterization schemes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 3997-4009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lihua Zhu ◽  
Gang Huang ◽  
Guangzhou Fan ◽  
Xia Qü ◽  
Zhibiao Wang ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeyong Hu ◽  
Xiaoqiang Yan

<p>Based on multi-level AWS data during 2001 to 2015 and eddy covariance data during 2011 to 2014 at Nagqu Station of Plateau Climate and Environment, the turbulent fluxes were calculated by a surface energy balance combination (CM) and eddy covariance ( EC) method. A long-term heat fluxes and surface heat source were obtained with comparison and correction of EC and CM fluxes. The surface energy closure ratio is close to 1 in spring, summer and autumn. But it reaches to 1.34 in winter due to low net radiation observation value on snow surface. The sensible heat flux shows a ascend trend while latent heat flux shows a descend trend during 2002 to 2015. The surface heat source shows a descend trend. The analysis of the surface heat source indicates that it has a significant relationship with net radiation flux, surface temperature, soil moisture and wind speed. Particularly, the surface heat source has a significant response to net radiation flux throughout the year. There are obvious influences of surface temperature and soil moisture on the surface heat source in spring, autumn and winter. And the influence of wind speeds on surface heat source is strong only in spring. The annual variation of sensible heat flux and latent heat flux are obvious. Sensible heat flux reaches the maximum value of the year in April and the minimum value in July. however, latent heat flux shows the maximum value in July and the minimum value in January. </p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Jorge de Oliveira Ponte de Souza ◽  
Juliana Chagas Rodrigues ◽  
Adriano Marlisom Leão de Sousa ◽  
Everaldo Barreiros de Souza

Abstract This study aimed to evaluate the diurnal energy balance during the reproductive stage of two growing seasons of a mango orchard in the northeast of Pará, Brazil. Therefore, a micrometeorological tower was installed and instrumented, in the center of the experimental area, to monitor meteorological variables, besides the phenological evaluation of the mango orchard, which was carried out during growing seasons of 2010-2011 (October 2010 to January 2011) and of 2011-2012 (September 2011 to January 2012). The energy balance was obtained by the bowen ration technique, and the available energy partitioned into heat flux to the ground, sensible heat and latent heat. The amount of rainfall was crucial to the partition of the net radiation in the energy balance components. It provided the variation in the consumption of available energy between 69% and 78% as latent heat flux, and between 23% and 32% as sensible heat flux. The heat flux to the ground was small, representing less than 1% of the net radiation, showing that the mango orchard exhibits good soil cover preventing large variations in soil heating.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (Special Issue 2) ◽  
pp. S49-S58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Brom ◽  
J. Procházka ◽  
A. Rejšková

The dissipation of solar energy and consequently the formation of the hydrological cycle are largely dependent on the structural and optical characteristics of the land surface. In our study, we selected seven units with different types of vegetation in the Mlýnský and Horský catchments (South-Eastern part of the Šumava Mountains, Czech Republic) for the assessment of the differences in their functioning expressed through the surface temperature, humidity, and energy dissipation. For our analyses, we used Landsat 5 TM satellite data from June 25<SUP>th</SUP>, 2008. The results showed that the microclimatic characteristics and energy fluxes varied in different units according to their vegetation characteristics. A cluster analysis of the mean values was used to divide the vegetation units into groups according to their functional characteristics. The mown meadows were characterised by the highest surface temperature and sensible heat flux and the lowest humidity and latent heat flux. On the contrary, the lowest surface temperature and sensible heat flux and the highest humidity and latent heat flux were found in the forest. Our results showed that the climatic and energetic features of the land surface are related to the type of vegetation. We state that the spatial distribution of different vegetation units and the amount of biomass are crucial variables influencing the functioning of the landscape.


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