Estimating Buoyancy Heat Flux Using the Surface Renewal Technique over Four Amazonian Forest Sites in Brazil

The surface renewal (SR) method was applied for the first time to measurements of air temperature over four Amazonian forest sites and different seasons in order to obtain estimates of buoyancy heat flux. The required calibration of this method against eddy covariance resulted in a value for a speci...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Boundary-layer meteorology 2013-11, Vol.149 (2), p.179-196
Main Authors: Zeri, Marcelo, Sá, Leonardo D. A., Nobre, Carlos A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air temperature
Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution
Atmospheric Sciences
Buoyancy
Convection, turbulence, diffusion. Boundary layer structure and dynamics
Covariance
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Eddies
Estimating techniques
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Fluxes
Forests
Heat flux
Instrumentation
Marine
Meteorology
Regression
Seasons
Wind speed
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Summary:The surface renewal (SR) method was applied for the first time to measurements of air temperature over four Amazonian forest sites and different seasons in order to obtain estimates of buoyancy heat flux. The required calibration of this method against eddy covariance resulted in a value for a specific parameter that is close to the range reported in other studies, contributing to the generalization of the SR method to different kinds of canopies. The comparison with fluxes obtained using the eddy covariance technique revealed a good match between the two methods for different sites, heights and seasons. Sites with high levels of non-stationarity in the signals of temperature and wind speed presented higher scatter in the regression with fluxes from eddy covariance. For a particular site with previously reported influence of low-frequency motions, the regression was only satisfactory, i.e., slope parameter close to unity and small offset, when oscillations with periods longer than ≈ 13 min were filtered out. The SR method has a great potential due to the simplicity of the instrumentation required. However, care should be taken when measuring under the influence of mesoscale motions, which can lead to high levels of non-stationarity, compromising the fundamental concepts of the SR theory.
ISSN:0006-8314
1573-1472
DOI:10.1007/s10546-013-9846-6