The influence of land surface parameters on energy flux densities derived from remote sensing data

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tittebrand, A.; Schwiebus, A. [Inst. for Hydrology und Meteorology, TU Dresden (Germany); Berger, F.H. [Observatory Lindenberg, German Weather Service, Lindenberg (Germany)

2005-04-01

Knowledge of the vegetation properties surface reflectance, normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and leaf area index (LAI) are essential for the determination of the heat and water fluxes between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. Remote sensing data can be used to derive spatial estimates of the required surface properties. The determination of land surface parameters and their influence on radiant and energy flux densities is investigated with data of different remote sensing systems. Sensitivity studies show the importance of correctly derived land surface properties to estimate the key quantity of the hydrological cycle, the evapotranspiration (L.E), most exactly. In addition to variable parameters like LAI or NDVI there are also parameters which are can not be inferred from satellite data but needed for the Penman-Monteith approach. Fixed values are assumed for these variables because they have little influence on L.E. Data of Landsat-7 ETM+ and NOAA-16 AVHRR are used to show results in different spatial resolution. The satellite derived results are compared with ground truth data provided by the Observatory Lindenberg of the German Weather Service. (orig.)

The role of land surface fluxes in Saudi-KAU AGCM: Temperature climatology over the Arabian Peninsula for the period 1981-2010

Science.gov (United States)

Ashfaqur Rahman, M.; Almazroui, Mansour; Nazrul Islam, M.; O'Brien, Enda; Yousef, Ahmed Elsayed

2018-02-01

A new version of the Community Land Model (CLM) was introduced to the Saudi King Abdulaziz University Atmospheric Global Climate Model (Saudi-KAU AGCM) for better land surface component representation, and so to enhance climate simulation. CLM replaced the original land surface model (LSM) in Saudi-KAU AGCM, with the aim of simulating more accurate land surface fluxes globally, but especially over the Arabian Peninsula. To evaluate the performance of Saudi-KAU AGCM, simulations were completed with CLM and LSM for the period 1981-2010. In comparison with LSM, CLM generates surface air temperature values that are closer to National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) observations. The global annual averages of land surface air temperature are 9.51, 9.52, and 9.57 °C for NCEP, CLM, and LSM respectively, although the same atmospheric radiative and surface forcing from Saudi-KAU AGCM are provided to both LSM and CLM at every time step. The better temperature simulations when using CLM can be attributed to the more comprehensive plant functional type and hierarchical tile approach to the land cover type in CLM, along with better parameterization of upward land surface fluxes compared to LSM. At global scale, CLM exhibits smaller annual and seasonal mean biases of temperature with respect to NCEP data. Moreover, at regional scale, CLM demonstrates reasonable seasonal and annual mean temperature over the Arabian Peninsula as compared to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) data. Finally, CLM generated better matches to single point-wise observations of surface air temperature and surface fluxes for some case studies.

Instantaneous heat flux flowing into piston top-land surface of D.I. diesel engine; DI diesel kikan no piston top land bu eno shunji netsuryusoku

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Taguma, M [Zexel Corp., Tokyo (Japan); Inui, M; Enomoto, Y; Hagihara, Y [Musashi Institute of Technology, Tokyo (Japan); Koyama, T [Mitsubishi Motors Co., Tokyo (Japan)

1997-10-01

The thermal loads of the piston top-land surface in D.I. diesel engine during actual operation is not cleared. The authors fixed thin film thermocouples in the top-land center of a standard piston, and measured the instantaneous heat fluxes in that place. As a result, the authors made clear the thermal loads of the piston top-land surface in a cycle, and confirmed presence of the flame inflow to the piston top-land center. In addition, the authors made clear the thermal loads of the piston top-land surface in EGR operation. 4 refs., 8 figs.

Comparison of energy fluxes at the land surface-atmosphere interface in an Alpine valley as simulated with different models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. Grossi

2003-01-01

Full Text Available Within the framework of a research project coupling meteorological and hydrological models in mountainous areas a distributed Snow-Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Transfer model was developed and applied to simulate the energy fluxes at the land surface – atmosphere interface in an Alpine valley (Toce Valley - North Italy during selected flood events in the last decade. Energy fluxes simulated by the distributed energy transfer model were compared with those simulated by a limited area meteorological model for the event of June 1997 and the differences in the spatial and temporal distribution. The Snow/Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Transfer model was also applied to simulate the energy fluxes at the land surface-atmosphere interface for a single cell, assumed to be representative of the Siberia site (Toce Valley, where a micro-meteorological station was installed and operated for 2.5 months in autumn 1999. The Siberia site is very close to the Nosere site, where a standard meteorological station was measuring precipitation, air temperature and humidity, global and net radiation and wind speed during the same special observing period. Data recorded by the standard meteorological station were used to force the energy transfer model and simulate the point energy fluxes at the Siberia site, while turbulent fluxes observed at the Siberia site were used to derive the latent heat flux from the energy balance equation. Finally, the hourly evapotranspiration flux computed by this procedure was compared to the evapotranspiration flux simulated by the energy transfer model. Keywords: energy exchange processes, land surface-atmosphere interactions, turbulent fluxes

Modeling radon flux from the earth's surface

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schery, S.D.; Wasiolek, M.A.

1998-01-01

We report development of a 222 Rn flux density model and its use to estimate the 222 Rn flux density over the earth's land surface. The resulting maps are generated on a grid spacing of 1 0 x 1 0 using as input global data for soil radium, soil moisture, and surface temperature. While only a first approximation, the maps suggest a significant regional variation (a factor of three is not uncommon) and a significant seasonal variation (a factor of two is not uncommon) in 222 Rn flux density over the earth's surface. The estimated average global flux density from ice-free land is 34 ± 9 mBq m -2 s -1 . (author)

Area-averaged evapotranspiration over a heterogeneous land surface: aggregation of multi-point EC flux measurements with a high-resolution land-cover map and footprint analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Xu

2017-08-01

Full Text Available The determination of area-averaged evapotranspiration (ET at the satellite pixel scale/model grid scale over a heterogeneous land surface plays a significant role in developing and improving the parameterization schemes of the remote sensing based ET estimation models and general hydro-meteorological models. The Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER flux matrix provided a unique opportunity to build an aggregation scheme for area-averaged fluxes. On the basis of the HiWATER flux matrix dataset and high-resolution land-cover map, this study focused on estimating the area-averaged ET over a heterogeneous landscape with footprint analysis and multivariate regression. The procedure is as follows. Firstly, quality control and uncertainty estimation for the data of the flux matrix, including 17 eddy-covariance (EC sites and four groups of large-aperture scintillometers (LASs, were carefully done. Secondly, the representativeness of each EC site was quantitatively evaluated; footprint analysis was also performed for each LAS path. Thirdly, based on the high-resolution land-cover map derived from aircraft remote sensing, a flux aggregation method was established combining footprint analysis and multiple-linear regression. Then, the area-averaged sensible heat fluxes obtained from the EC flux matrix were validated by the LAS measurements. Finally, the area-averaged ET of the kernel experimental area of HiWATER was estimated. Compared with the formerly used and rather simple approaches, such as the arithmetic average and area-weighted methods, the present scheme is not only with a much better database, but also has a solid grounding in physics and mathematics in the integration of area-averaged fluxes over a heterogeneous surface. Results from this study, both instantaneous and daily ET at the satellite pixel scale, can be used for the validation of relevant remote sensing models and land surface process models. Furthermore, this

Area-averaged evapotranspiration over a heterogeneous land surface: aggregation of multi-point EC flux measurements with a high-resolution land-cover map and footprint analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Feinan; Wang, Weizhen; Wang, Jiemin; Xu, Ziwei; Qi, Yuan; Wu, Yueru

2017-08-01

The determination of area-averaged evapotranspiration (ET) at the satellite pixel scale/model grid scale over a heterogeneous land surface plays a significant role in developing and improving the parameterization schemes of the remote sensing based ET estimation models and general hydro-meteorological models. The Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER) flux matrix provided a unique opportunity to build an aggregation scheme for area-averaged fluxes. On the basis of the HiWATER flux matrix dataset and high-resolution land-cover map, this study focused on estimating the area-averaged ET over a heterogeneous landscape with footprint analysis and multivariate regression. The procedure is as follows. Firstly, quality control and uncertainty estimation for the data of the flux matrix, including 17 eddy-covariance (EC) sites and four groups of large-aperture scintillometers (LASs), were carefully done. Secondly, the representativeness of each EC site was quantitatively evaluated; footprint analysis was also performed for each LAS path. Thirdly, based on the high-resolution land-cover map derived from aircraft remote sensing, a flux aggregation method was established combining footprint analysis and multiple-linear regression. Then, the area-averaged sensible heat fluxes obtained from the EC flux matrix were validated by the LAS measurements. Finally, the area-averaged ET of the kernel experimental area of HiWATER was estimated. Compared with the formerly used and rather simple approaches, such as the arithmetic average and area-weighted methods, the present scheme is not only with a much better database, but also has a solid grounding in physics and mathematics in the integration of area-averaged fluxes over a heterogeneous surface. Results from this study, both instantaneous and daily ET at the satellite pixel scale, can be used for the validation of relevant remote sensing models and land surface process models. Furthermore, this work will be

Climate-induced hotspots in surface energy fluxes from 1948 to 2000

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sheng Li; Liu Shuhua; Liu Heping

2010-01-01

Understanding how land surfaces respond to climate change requires knowledge of land-surface processes, which control the degree to which interannual variability and mean trends in climatic variables affect the surface energy budget. We use the latest version of the Community Land Model version 3.5 (CLM3.5), which is driven by the latest updated hybrid reanalysis-observation atmospheric forcing dataset constructed by Princeton University, to obtain global distributions of the surface energy budget from 1948 to 2000. We identify climate change hotspots and surface energy flux hotspots from 1948 to 2000. Surface energy flux hotspots, which reflect regions with strong changes in surface energy fluxes, reveal seasonal variations with strong signals in winter, spring, and autumn and weak ones in summer. Locations for surface energy flux hotspots are not, however, fully linked with those for climate change hotspots, suggesting that only in some regions are land surfaces more responsive to climate change in terms of interannual variability and mean trends.

Surface Characterization for Land-Atmosphere Studies of CLASIC

Science.gov (United States)

Jackson, T. J.; Kustas, W.; Torn, M. S.; Meyers, T.; Prueger, J.; Fischer, M. L.; Avissar, R.; Yueh, S.; Anderson, M.; Miller, M.

2006-12-01

The Cloud and Land Surface Interaction Campaign will focus on interactions between the land surface, convective boundary layer, and cumulus clouds. It will take place in the Southern Great Plains (SGP) area of the U.S, specifically within the US DOE ARM Climate Research Facility. The intensive observing period will be June of 2007, which typically covers the winter wheat harvest in the region. This region has been the focus of several related experiments that include SGP97, SGP99, and SMEX03. For the land surface, some of the specific science questions include 1) how do spatial variations in land cover along this trajectory modulate the cloud structure and the low-level water vapor budget, 2) what are the relationships between land surface characteristics (i.e., soil texture, vegetation type and fractional cover) and states (particularly soil moisture and surface temperature) and the resulting impact of the surface energy balance on boundary layer and cloud structure and dynamics and aerosol loading; and 3) what is the interplay between cumulus cloud development and surface energy balance partitioning between latent and sensible heat, and implications for the carbon flux? Most of these objectives will require flux and state measurements throughout the dominant land covers and distributed over the geographic domain. These observations would allow determining the level of up- scaling/aggregation required in order to understand the impact of landscape changes affecting energy balance/flux partitioning and impact on cloud/atmospheric dynamics. Specific contributions that are planned to be added to CLASIC include continuous tower-based monitoring of surface fluxes for key land cover types prior to, during, and post-IOP, replicate towers to quantify flux variance within each land cover, boundary layer properties and fluxes from a helicopter-based system, airplane- and satellite-based flux products throughout the region, aircraft- and tower-based concentration data for

Translation of Land Surface Model Accuracy and Uncertainty into Coupled Land-Atmosphere Prediction

Science.gov (United States)

Santanello, Joseph A.; Kumar, Sujay; Peters-Lidard, Christa D.; Harrison, Kenneth W.; Zhou, Shuija

2012-01-01

Land-atmosphere (L-A) Interactions playa critical role in determining the diurnal evolution of both planetary boundary layer (PBL) and land surface heat and moisture budgets, as well as controlling feedbacks with clouds and precipitation that lead to the persistence of dry and wet regimes. Recent efforts to quantify the strength of L-A coupling in prediction models have produced diagnostics that integrate across both the land and PBL components of the system. In this study, we examine the impact of improved specification of land surface states, anomalies, and fluxes on coupled WRF forecasts during the summers of extreme dry (2006) and wet (2007) land surface conditions in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. The improved land initialization and surface flux parameterizations are obtained through the use of a new optimization and uncertainty estimation module in NASA's Land Information System (US-OPT/UE), whereby parameter sets are calibrated in the Noah land surface model and classified according to a land cover and soil type mapping of the observation sites to the full model domain. The impact of calibrated parameters on the a) spinup of the land surface used as initial conditions, and b) heat and moisture states and fluxes of the coupled WRF Simulations are then assessed in terms of ambient weather and land-atmosphere coupling along with measures of uncertainty propagation into the forecasts. In addition, the sensitivity of this approach to the period of calibration (dry, wet, average) is investigated. Finally, tradeoffs of computational tractability and scientific validity, and the potential for combining this approach with satellite remote sensing data are also discussed.

Translation of Land Surface Model Accuracy and Uncertainty into Coupled Land-Atmosphere Prediction

Science.gov (United States)

Santanello, J. A.; Kumar, S.; Peters-Lidard, C. D.; Harrison, K. W.; Zhou, S.

2012-12-01

Land-atmosphere (L-A) interactions play a critical role in determining the diurnal evolution of both planetary boundary layer (PBL) and land surface heat and moisture budgets, as well as controlling feedbacks with clouds and precipitation that lead to the persistence of dry and wet regimes. Recent efforts to quantify the strength of L-A coupling in prediction models have produced diagnostics that integrate across both the land and PBL components of the system. In this study, we examine the impact of improved specification of land surface states, anomalies, and fluxes on coupled WRF forecasts during the summers of extreme dry (2006) and wet (2007) land surface conditions in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. The improved land initialization and surface flux parameterizations are obtained through the use of a new optimization and uncertainty estimation module in NASA's Land Information System (LIS-OPT/UE), whereby parameter sets are calibrated in the Noah land surface model and classified according to a land cover and soil type mapping of the observation sites to the full model domain. The impact of calibrated parameters on the a) spinup of the land surface used as initial conditions, and b) heat and moisture states and fluxes of the coupled WRF simulations are then assessed in terms of ambient weather and land-atmosphere coupling along with measures of uncertainty propagation into the forecasts. In addition, the sensitivity of this approach to the period of calibration (dry, wet, average) is investigated. Finally, tradeoffs of computational tractability and scientific validity, and the potential for combining this approach with satellite remote sensing data are also discussed.

The SURFEXv7.2 land and ocean surface platform for coupled or offline simulation of earth surface variables and fluxes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

V. Masson

2013-07-01

Full Text Available SURFEX is a new externalized land and ocean surface platform that describes the surface fluxes and the evolution of four types of surfaces: nature, town, inland water and ocean. It is mostly based on pre-existing, well-validated scientific models that are continuously improved. The motivation for the building of SURFEX is to use strictly identical scientific models in a high range of applications in order to mutualise the research and development efforts. SURFEX can be run in offline mode (0-D or 2-D runs or in coupled mode (from mesoscale models to numerical weather prediction and climate models. An assimilation mode is included for numerical weather prediction and monitoring. In addition to momentum, heat and water fluxes, SURFEX is able to simulate fluxes of carbon dioxide, chemical species, continental aerosols, sea salt and snow particles. The main principles of the organisation of the surface are described first. Then, a survey is made of the scientific module (including the coupling strategy. Finally, the main applications of the code are summarised. The validation work undertaken shows that replacing the pre-existing surface models by SURFEX in these applications is usually associated with improved skill, as the numerous scientific developments contained in this community code are used to good advantage.

The SURFEXv7.2 land and ocean surface platform for coupled or offline simulation of earth surface variables and fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Masson, V.; Le Moigne, P.; Martin, E.; Faroux, S.; Alias, A.; Alkama, R.; Belamari, S.; Barbu, A.; Boone, A.; Bouyssel, F.; Brousseau, P.; Brun, E.; Calvet, J.-C.; Carrer, D.; Decharme, B.; Delire, C.; Donier, S.; Essaouini, K.; Gibelin, A.-L.; Giordani, H.; Habets, F.; Jidane, M.; Kerdraon, G.; Kourzeneva, E.; Lafaysse, M.; Lafont, S.; Lebeaupin Brossier, C.; Lemonsu, A.; Mahfouf, J.-F.; Marguinaud, P.; Mokhtari, M.; Morin, S.; Pigeon, G.; Salgado, R.; Seity, Y.; Taillefer, F.; Tanguy, G.; Tulet, P.; Vincendon, B.; Vionnet, V.; Voldoire, A.

2013-07-01

SURFEX is a new externalized land and ocean surface platform that describes the surface fluxes and the evolution of four types of surfaces: nature, town, inland water and ocean. It is mostly based on pre-existing, well-validated scientific models that are continuously improved. The motivation for the building of SURFEX is to use strictly identical scientific models in a high range of applications in order to mutualise the research and development efforts. SURFEX can be run in offline mode (0-D or 2-D runs) or in coupled mode (from mesoscale models to numerical weather prediction and climate models). An assimilation mode is included for numerical weather prediction and monitoring. In addition to momentum, heat and water fluxes, SURFEX is able to simulate fluxes of carbon dioxide, chemical species, continental aerosols, sea salt and snow particles. The main principles of the organisation of the surface are described first. Then, a survey is made of the scientific module (including the coupling strategy). Finally, the main applications of the code are summarised. The validation work undertaken shows that replacing the pre-existing surface models by SURFEX in these applications is usually associated with improved skill, as the numerous scientific developments contained in this community code are used to good advantage.

Roughness Length of Water Vapor over Land Surfaces and Its Influence on Latent Heat Flux

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sang-Jong Park

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Latent heat flux at the surface is largely dependent on the roughness length for water vapor (z0q. The determination of z0q is still uncertain because of its multifaceted characteristics of surface properties, atmospheric conditions and insufficient observations. In this study, observed values from the Fluxes Over Snow Surface II field experiment (FLOSS-II from November 2002 to March 2003 were utilized to estimate z0q over various land surfaces: bare soil, snow, and senescent grass. The present results indicate that the estimated z0q over bare soil is much smaller than the roughness length of momentum (z0m; thus, the ratio z0m/z0q is larger than those of previous studies by a factor of 20 - 150 for the available flow regime of the roughness Reynolds number, Re* > 0.1. On the snow surface, the ratio is comparable to a previous estimation for the rough flow (Re* > 1, but smaller by a factor of 10 - 50 as the flow became smooth (Re* < 1. Using the estimated ratio, an optimal regression equation of z0m/z0q is determined as a function of Re* for each surface type. The present parameterization of the ratio is found to greatly reduce biases of latent heat flux estimation compared with that estimated by the conventional method, suggesting the usefulness of current parameterization for numerical modeling.

Inferring CO2 Fluxes from OCO-2 for Assimilation into Land Surface Models to Calculate Net Ecosystem Exchange

Science.gov (United States)

Prouty, R.; Radov, A.; Halem, M.; Nearing, G. S.

2016-12-01

Investigations of mid to high latitude atmospheric CO2 show a growing seasonal amplitude. Land surface models poorly predict net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and are unable to substantiate these sporadic observations. An investigation of how the biosphere has reacted to changes in atmospheric CO2 is essential to our understanding of potential climate-vegetation feedbacks. A global, seasonal investigation of CO2-flux is then necessary in order to assimilate into land surface models for improving the prediction of annual NEE. The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program (ARM) of DOE collects CO2-flux measurements (in addition to CO2 concentration and various other meteorological quantities) at several towers located around the globe at half hour temporal frequencies. CO2-fluxes are calculated via the eddy covariance technique, which utilizes CO2-densities and wind velocities to calculate CO2-fluxes. The global coverage of CO2 concentrations as provided by the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) provide satellite-derived CO2 concentrations all over the globe. A framework relating the satellite-inferred CO2 concentrations collocated with the ground-based ARM as well as Ameriflux stations would enable calculations of CO2-fluxes far from the station sites around the entire globe. Regression techniques utilizing deep-learning neural networks may provide such a framework. Additionally, meteorological reanalysis allows for the replacement of the ARM multivariable meteorological variables needed to infer the CO2-fluxes. We present the results of inferring CO2-fluxes from OCO-2 CO2 concentrations for a two year period, Sept. 2014- Sept. 2016 at the ARM station located near Oklahoma City. A feed-forward neural network (FFNN) is used to infer relationships between the following data sets: F([ARM CO2-density], [ARM Meteorological Data]) = [ARM CO2-Flux] F([OCO-2 CO2-density],[ARM Meteorological Data]) = [ARM CO2-Flux] F([ARM CO2-density],[Meteorological Reanalysis]) = [ARM CO2-Flux

Quantifying the Terrestrial Surface Energy Fluxes Using Remotely-Sensed Satellite Data

Science.gov (United States)

Siemann, Amanda Lynn

The dynamics of the energy fluxes between the land surface and the atmosphere drive local and regional climate and are paramount to understand the past, present, and future changes in climate. Although global reanalysis datasets, land surface models (LSMs), and climate models estimate these fluxes by simulating the physical processes involved, they merely simulate our current understanding of these processes. Global estimates of the terrestrial, surface energy fluxes based on observations allow us to capture the dynamics of the full climate system. Remotely-sensed satellite data is the source of observations of the land surface which provide the widest spatial coverage. Although net radiation and latent heat flux global, terrestrial, surface estimates based on remotely-sensed satellite data have progressed, comparable sensible heat data products and ground heat flux products have not progressed at this scale. Our primary objective is quantifying and understanding the terrestrial energy fluxes at the Earth's surface using remotely-sensed satellite data with consistent development among all energy budget components [through the land surface temperature (LST) and input meteorology], including validation of these products against in-situ data, uncertainty assessments, and long-term trend analysis. The turbulent fluxes are constrained by the available energy using the Bowen ratio of the un-constrained products to ensure energy budget closure. All final products are within uncertainty ranges of literature values, globally. When validated against the in-situ estimates, the sensible heat flux estimates using the CFSR air temperature and constrained with the products using the MODIS albedo produce estimates closest to the FLUXNET in-situ observations. Poor performance over South America is consistent with the largest uncertainties in the energy budget. From 1984-2007, the longwave upward flux increase due to the LST increase drives the net radiation decrease, and the

SAFARI 2000 AVHRR-derived Land Surface Temperature Maps, Africa, 1995-2000

Data.gov (United States)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — ABSTRACT: Land Surface Temperature (LST) is a key indicator of land surface states, and can provide information on surface-atmosphere heat and mass fluxes,...

SAFARI 2000 AVHRR-derived Land Surface Temperature Maps, Africa, 1995-2000

Data.gov (United States)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — Land Surface Temperature (LST) is a key indicator of land surface states, and can provide information on surface-atmosphere heat and mass fluxes, vegetation water...

Inferring near surface soil temperature time series from different land uses to quantify the variation of heat fluxes into a shallow aquifer in Austria

Science.gov (United States)

Kupfersberger, Hans; Rock, Gerhard; Draxler, Johannes C.

2017-09-01

Different land uses exert a strong spatially distributed and temporal varying signal of heat fluxes from the surface in or out of the ground. In this paper we show an approach to quantify the heat fluxes into a groundwater body differentiating between near surface soil temperatures under grass, forest, asphalt, agriculture and surface water bodies and heat fluxes from subsurface structures like heated basements or sewage pipes. Based on observed time series of near surface soil temperatures we establish individual parameters (e.g. shift, moving average) of a simple empirical function that relates air temperature to soil temperature. This procedure is useful since air temperature time series are readily available and the complex energy flux processes at the soil atmosphere interface do not need to be described in detail. To quantify the heat flux from heated subsurface structures that have lesser depths to the groundwater table the 1D heat conduction module SoilTemp is developed. Based on soil temperature time series observed at different depths in a research lysimeter heat conduction and heat storage capacity values are calibrated disregarding their dependence on the water content. With SoilTemp the strong interaction between time series of groundwater temperature and groundwater level, near surface soil temperatures and the basement temperatures in heated buildings could be evaluated showing the dynamic nature of thermal gradients. The heat fluxes from urban areas are calculated considering the land use patterns within a spatial unit by mixing the heat fluxes from basements with those under grass and asphalt. The heat fluxes from sewage pipes and of sewage leakage are shown to be negligible for evaluated pipe diameters and sewage discharges. The developed methodology will allow to parameterize the upper boundary of heat transport models and to differentiate between the heat fluxes from different surface usages and their dynamics into the subsurface.

Shallow to Deep Convection Transition over a Heterogeneous Land Surface Using the Land Model Coupled Large-Eddy Simulation

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Lee, J.; Zhang, Y.; Klein, S. A.

2017-12-01

The triggering of the land breeze, and hence the development of deep convection over heterogeneous land should be understood as a consequence of the complex processes involving various factors from land surface and atmosphere simultaneously. That is a sub-grid scale process that many large-scale models have difficulty incorporating it into the parameterization scheme partly due to lack of our understanding. Thus, it is imperative that we approach the problem using a high-resolution modeling framework. In this study, we use SAM-SLM (Lee and Khairoutdinov, 2015), a large-eddy simulation model coupled to a land model, to explore the cloud effect such as cold pool, the cloud shading and the soil moisture memory on the land breeze structure and the further development of cloud and precipitation over a heterogeneous land surface. The atmospheric large scale forcing and the initial sounding are taken from the new composite case study of the fair-weather, non-precipitating shallow cumuli at ARM SGP (Zhang et al., 2017). We model the land surface as a chess board pattern with alternating leaf area index (LAI). The patch contrast of the LAI is adjusted to encompass the weak to strong heterogeneity amplitude. The surface sensible- and latent heat fluxes are computed according to the given LAI representing the differential surface heating over a heterogeneous land surface. Separate from the surface forcing imposed from the originally modeled surface, the cases that transition into the moist convection can induce another layer of the surface heterogeneity from the 1) radiation shading by clouds, 2) adjusted soil moisture pattern by the rain, 3) spreading cold pool. First, we assess and quantifies the individual cloud effect on the land breeze and the moist convection under the weak wind to simplify the feedback processes. And then, the same set of experiments is repeated under sheared background wind with low level jet, a typical summer time wind pattern at ARM SGP site, to

Effects of leaf area index on the coupling between water table, land surface energy fluxes, and planetary boundary layer at the regional scale

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Y.; Rihani, J.; Langensiepen, M.; Simmer, C.

2013-12-01

Vegetation plays an important role in the exchange of moisture and energy at the land surface. Previous studies indicate that vegetation increases the complexity of the feedbacks between the atmosphere and subsurface through processes such as interception, root water uptake, leaf surface evaporation, and transpiration. Vegetation cover can affect not only the interaction between water table depth and energy fluxes, but also the development of the planetary boundary layer. Leaf Area Index (LAI) is shown to be a major factor influencing these interactions. In this work, we investigate the sensitivity of water table, surface energy fluxes, and atmospheric boundary layer interactions to LAI as a model input. We particularly focus on the role LAI plays on the location and extent of transition zones of strongest coupling and how this role changes over seasonal timescales for a real catchment. The Terrestrial System Modelling Platform (TerrSysMP), developed within the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 32 (TR32), is used in this study. TerrSysMP consists of the variably saturated groundwater model ParFlow, the land surface model Community Land Model (CLM), and the regional climate and weather forecast model COSMO (COnsortium for Small-scale Modeling). The sensitivity analysis is performed over a range of LAI values for different vegetation types as extracted from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) dataset for the Rur catchment in Germany. In the first part of this work, effects of vegetation structure on land surface energy fluxes and their connection to water table dynamics are studied using the stand-alone CLM and the coupled subsurface-surface components of TerrSysMP (ParFlow-CLM), respectively. The interconnection between LAI and transition zones of strongest coupling are investigated and analyzed through a subsequent set of subsurface-surface-atmosphere coupled simulations implementing the full TerrSysMP model system.

Modeling surface energy fluxes from a patchwork of fields with different soils and crops

Science.gov (United States)

Klein, Christian; Thieme, Christoph; Heinlein, Florian; Priesack, Eckart

2017-04-01

Agroecosystems are a dominant terrestrial land-use on planet earth and cover about 36% of the ice-free surface (12% pasture, 26% agriculture) [Foley2011]. Within this land use type, management practices vary strongly due to climate, cultural preferences, degree of industrialization, soil properties, crop rotations, field sizes, degree of land use sustainability, water availability, sowing and harvest dates, tillage, etc. These management practices influence abiotic environmental factors like water flow and heat transport within the ecosystem leading to changes of land surface fluxes. The relevance of vegetation (e.g. crops), ground cover, and soil properties to the moisture and energy exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere is well known [McPherson 2007], but the impact of vegetation growth dynamics on energy fluxes is only partly understood [Gayler et al. 2014]. Thus, the structure of turbulence and the albedo evolve during the cropping period and large variations of heat can be measured on the field scale [Aubinet2012]. One issue of local distributed mixture of different land use is the measurement process which makes it challenging to evaluate simulations. Unfortunately, for meteorological flux-measurements like the Flux-Gradient or the Eddy Covariance (EC) method, comparability with simulations only exists in the ideal case, where fields have to be completely uniform in land use and flat within the reach of the footprint. Then a model with one specific land use would have the same underlying source area as the measurement. An elegant method to avoid the shortcoming of grid cell resolution is the so called mixed approach, which was recently implemented into the ecosystem model framework Expert-N [Biernath et al. 2013]. The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of the characteristics of five managed field plots, planted with winter wheat, potato and maize on the near surface soil moistures and on the near surface energy flux exchanges of the

Advances in land modeling of KIAPS based on the Noah Land Surface Model

Science.gov (United States)

Koo, Myung-Seo; Baek, Sunghye; Seol, Kyung-Hee; Cho, Kyoungmi

2017-08-01

As of 2013, the Noah Land Surface Model (LSM) version 2.7.1 was implemented in a new global model being developed at the Korea Institute of Atmospheric Prediction Systems (KIAPS). This land surface scheme is further refined in two aspects, by adding new physical processes and by updating surface input parameters. Thus, the treatment of glacier land, sea ice, and snow cover are addressed more realistically. Inconsistencies in the amount of absorbed solar flux at ground level by the land surface and radiative processes are rectified. In addition, new parameters are available by using 1-km land cover data, which had usually not been possible at a global scale. Land surface albedo/emissivity climatology is newly created using Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellitebased data and adjusted parameterization. These updates have been applied to the KIAPS-developed model and generally provide a positive impact on near-surface weather forecasting.

Assessing uncertainty and sensitivity of model parameterizations and parameters in WRF affecting simulated surface fluxes and land-atmosphere coupling over the Amazon region

Science.gov (United States)

Qian, Y.; Wang, C.; Huang, M.; Berg, L. K.; Duan, Q.; Feng, Z.; Shrivastava, M. B.; Shin, H. H.; Hong, S. Y.

2016-12-01

This study aims to quantify the relative importance and uncertainties of different physical processes and parameters in affecting simulated surface fluxes and land-atmosphere coupling strength over the Amazon region. We used two-legged coupling metrics, which include both terrestrial (soil moisture to surface fluxes) and atmospheric (surface fluxes to atmospheric state or precipitation) legs, to diagnose the land-atmosphere interaction and coupling strength. Observations made using the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Mobile Facility during the GoAmazon field campaign together with satellite and reanalysis data are used to evaluate model performance. To quantify the uncertainty in physical parameterizations, we performed a 120 member ensemble of simulations with the WRF model using a stratified experimental design including 6 cloud microphysics, 3 convection, 6 PBL and surface layer, and 3 land surface schemes. A multiple-way analysis of variance approach is used to quantitatively analyze the inter- and intra-group (scheme) means and variances. To quantify parameter sensitivity, we conducted an additional 256 WRF simulations in which an efficient sampling algorithm is used to explore the multiple-dimensional parameter space. Three uncertainty quantification approaches are applied for sensitivity analysis (SA) of multiple variables of interest to 20 selected parameters in YSU PBL and MM5 surface layer schemes. Results show consistent parameter sensitivity across different SA methods. We found that 5 out of 20 parameters contribute more than 90% total variance, and first-order effects dominate comparing to the interaction effects. Results of this uncertainty quantification study serve as guidance for better understanding the roles of different physical processes in land-atmosphere interactions, quantifying model uncertainties from various sources such as physical processes, parameters and structural errors, and providing insights for

Two-Layer Variable Infiltration Capacity Land Surface Representation for General Circulation Models

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Xu, L.

1994-01-01

A simple two-layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC-2L) land surface model suitable for incorporation in general circulation models (GCMs) is described. The model consists of a two-layer characterization of the soil within a GCM grid cell, and uses an aerodynamic representation of latent and sensible heat fluxes at the land surface. The effects of GCM spatial subgrid variability of soil moisture and a hydrologically realistic runoff mechanism are represented in the soil layers. The model was tested using long-term hydrologic and climatalogical data for Kings Creek, Kansas to estimate and validate the hydrological parameters. Surface flux data from three First International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project Field Experiments (FIFE) intensive field compaigns in the summer and fall of 1987 in central Kansas, and from the Anglo-Brazilian Amazonian Climate Observation Study (ABRACOS) in Brazil were used to validate the mode-simulated surface energy fluxes and surface temperature.

Validating modeled turbulent heat fluxes across large freshwater surfaces

Science.gov (United States)

Lofgren, B. M.; Fujisaki-Manome, A.; Gronewold, A.; Anderson, E. J.; Fitzpatrick, L.; Blanken, P.; Spence, C.; Lenters, J. D.; Xiao, C.; Charusambot, U.

2017-12-01

Turbulent fluxes of latent and sensible heat are important physical processes that influence the energy and water budgets of the Great Lakes. Validation and improvement of bulk flux algorithms to simulate these turbulent heat fluxes are critical for accurate prediction of hydrodynamics, water levels, weather, and climate over the region. Here we consider five heat flux algorithms from several model systems; the Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model, the Weather Research and Forecasting model, and the Large Lake Thermodynamics Model, which are used in research and operational environments and concentrate on different aspects of the Great Lakes' physical system, but interface at the lake surface. The heat flux algorithms were isolated from each model and driven by meteorological data from over-lake stations in the Great Lakes Evaporation Network. The simulation results were compared with eddy covariance flux measurements at the same stations. All models show the capacity to the seasonal cycle of the turbulent heat fluxes. Overall, the Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment algorithm in FVCOM has the best agreement with eddy covariance measurements. Simulations with the other four algorithms are overall improved by updating the parameterization of roughness length scales of temperature and humidity. Agreement between modelled and observed fluxes notably varied with geographical locations of the stations. For example, at the Long Point station in Lake Erie, observed fluxes are likely influenced by the upwind land surface while the simulations do not take account of the land surface influence, and therefore the agreement is worse in general.

Quantifying Surface Energy Flux Estimation Uncertainty Using Land Surface Temperature Observations

Science.gov (United States)

French, A. N.; Hunsaker, D.; Thorp, K.; Bronson, K. F.

2015-12-01

Remote sensing with thermal infrared is widely recognized as good way to estimate surface heat fluxes, map crop water use, and detect water-stressed vegetation. When combined with net radiation and soil heat flux data, observations of sensible heat fluxes derived from surface temperatures (LST) are indicative of instantaneous evapotranspiration (ET). There are, however, substantial reasons LST data may not provide the best way to estimate of ET. For example, it is well known that observations and models of LST, air temperature, or estimates of transport resistances may be so inaccurate that physically based model nevertheless yield non-meaningful results. Furthermore, using visible and near infrared remote sensing observations collected at the same time as LST often yield physically plausible results because they are constrained by less dynamic surface conditions such as green fractional cover. Although sensitivity studies exist that help identify likely sources of error and uncertainty, ET studies typically do not provide a way to assess the relative importance of modeling ET with and without LST inputs. To better quantify model benefits and degradations due to LST observational inaccuracies, a Bayesian uncertainty study was undertaken using data collected in remote sensing experiments at Maricopa, Arizona. Visible, near infrared and thermal infrared data were obtained from an airborne platform. The prior probability distribution of ET estimates were modeled using fractional cover, local weather data and a Penman-Monteith mode, while the likelihood of LST data was modeled from a two-source energy balance model. Thus the posterior probabilities of ET represented the value added by using LST data. Results from an ET study over cotton grown in 2014 and 2015 showed significantly reduced ET confidence intervals when LST data were incorporated.

Inverse modeling of hydrologic parameters using surface flux and runoff observations in the Community Land Model

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Y.; Hou, Z.; Huang, M.; Tian, F.; Leung, L. Ruby

2013-12-01

This study demonstrates the possibility of inverting hydrologic parameters using surface flux and runoff observations in version 4 of the Community Land Model (CLM4). Previous studies showed that surface flux and runoff calculations are sensitive to major hydrologic parameters in CLM4 over different watersheds, and illustrated the necessity and possibility of parameter calibration. Both deterministic least-square fitting and stochastic Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-Bayesian inversion approaches are evaluated by applying them to CLM4 at selected sites with different climate and soil conditions. The unknowns to be estimated include surface and subsurface runoff generation parameters and vadose zone soil water parameters. We find that using model parameters calibrated by the sampling-based stochastic inversion approaches provides significant improvements in the model simulations compared to using default CLM4 parameter values, and that as more information comes in, the predictive intervals (ranges of posterior distributions) of the calibrated parameters become narrower. In general, parameters that are identified to be significant through sensitivity analyses and statistical tests are better calibrated than those with weak or nonlinear impacts on flux or runoff observations. Temporal resolution of observations has larger impacts on the results of inverse modeling using heat flux data than runoff data. Soil and vegetation cover have important impacts on parameter sensitivities, leading to different patterns of posterior distributions of parameters at different sites. Overall, the MCMC-Bayesian inversion approach effectively and reliably improves the simulation of CLM under different climates and environmental conditions. Bayesian model averaging of the posterior estimates with different reference acceptance probabilities can smooth the posterior distribution and provide more reliable parameter estimates, but at the expense of wider uncertainty bounds.

Impact of Land Cover Change Induced by a Fire Event on the Surface Energy Fluxes Derived from Remote Sensing

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Juan M. Sánchez

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Forest fires affect the natural cycle of the vegetation, and the structure and functioning of ecosystems. As a consequence of defoliation and vegetation mortality, surface energy flux patterns can suffer variations. Remote sensing techniques together with surface energy balance modeling offer the opportunity to explore these changes. In this paper we focus on a Mediterranean forest ecosystem. A fire event occurred in 2001 in Almodóvar del Pinar (Spain affecting a pine and shrub area. A two-source energy balance approach was applied to a set of Landsat 5-TM and Landsat 7-EMT+ images to estimate the surface fluxes in the area. Three post-fire periods were analyzed, six, seven, nine, and 11 years after the fire event. Results showed the regeneration of the shrub area in 6–7 years, in contrast to the pine area, where an important decrease in evapotranspiration, around 1 mm·day−1, remained. Differences in evapotranspiration were mitigated nine and 11 years after the fire in the pine area, whereas significant deviations in the rest of the terms of the energy balance equation were still observed. The combined effect of changes in the vegetation structure and surface variables, such as land surface temperature, albedo, or vegetation coverage, is responsible for these variations in the surface energy flux patterns.

Effect of water table dynamics on land surface hydrologic memory

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Lo, Min-Hui; Famiglietti, James S.

2010-11-01

The representation of groundwater dynamics in land surface models has received considerable attention in recent years. Most studies have found that soil moisture increases after adding a groundwater component because of the additional supply of water to the root zone. However, the effect of groundwater on land surface hydrologic memory (persistence) has not been explored thoroughly. In this study we investigate the effect of water table dynamics on National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Land Model hydrologic simulations in terms of land surface hydrologic memory. Unlike soil water or evapotranspiration, results show that land surface hydrologic memory does not always increase after adding a groundwater component. In regions where the water table level is intermediate, land surface hydrologic memory can even decrease, which occurs when soil moisture and capillary rise from groundwater are not in phase with each other. Further, we explore the hypothesis that in addition to atmospheric forcing, groundwater variations may also play an important role in affecting land surface hydrologic memory. Analyses show that feedbacks of groundwater on land surface hydrologic memory can be positive, negative, or neutral, depending on water table dynamics. In regions where the water table is shallow, the damping process of soil moisture variations by groundwater is not significant, and soil moisture variations are mostly controlled by random noise from atmospheric forcing. In contrast, in regions where the water table is very deep, capillary fluxes from groundwater are small, having limited potential to affect soil moisture variations. Therefore, a positive feedback of groundwater to land surface hydrologic memory is observed in a transition zone between deep and shallow water tables, where capillary fluxes act as a buffer by reducing high-frequency soil moisture variations resulting in longer land surface hydrologic memory.

Evaluation of surface layer flux parameterizations using in-situ observations

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Katz, Jeremy; Zhu, Ping

2017-09-01

Appropriate calculation of surface turbulent fluxes between the atmosphere and the underlying ocean/land surface is one of the major challenges in geosciences. In practice, the surface turbulent fluxes are estimated from the mean surface meteorological variables based on the bulk transfer model combined with the Monnin-Obukhov Similarity (MOS) theory. Few studies have been done to examine the extent to which such a flux parameterization can be applied to different weather and surface conditions. A novel validation method is developed in this study to evaluate the surface flux parameterization using in-situ observations collected at a station off the coast of Gulf of Mexico. The main findings are: (a) the theoretical prediction that uses MOS theory does not match well with those directly computed from the observations. (b) The largest spread in exchange coefficients is shown in strong stable conditions with calm winds. (c) Large turbulent eddies, which depend strongly on the mean flow pattern and surface conditions, tend to break the constant flux assumption in the surface layer.

Evaluating the use of sharpened land surface temperature for daily evapotranspiration estimation over irrigated crops in arid lands

KAUST Repository

Rosas, Jorge

2014-12-01

Satellite remote sensing provides data on land surface characteristics, useful for mapping land surface energy fluxes and evapotranspiration (ET). Land-surface temperature (LST) derived from thermal infrared (TIR) satellite data has been reliably used as a remote indicator of ET and surface moisture status. However, TIR imagery usually operates at a coarser resolution than that of shortwave sensors on the same satellite platform, making it sometimes unsuitable for monitoring of field-scale crop conditions. This study applies the data mining sharpener (DMS; Gao et al., 2012) technique to data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), which sharpens the 1 km thermal data down to the resolution of the optical data (250-500 m) based on functional LST and reflectance relationships established using a flexible regression tree approach. The DMS approach adopted here has been enhanced/refined for application over irrigated farming areas located in harsh desert environments in Saudi Arabia. The sharpened LST data is input to an integrated modeling system that uses the Atmosphere-Land Exchange Inverse (ALEXI) model and associated flux disaggregation scheme (DisALEXI) in conjunction with model reanalysis data and remotely sensed data from polar orbiting (MODIS) and geostationary (MSG; Meteosat Second Generation) satellite platforms to facilitate daily estimates of evapotranspiration. Results are evaluated against available flux tower observations over irrigated maize near Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Successful monitoring of field-scale changes in surface fluxes are of importance towards an efficient water use in areas where fresh water resources are scarce and poorly monitored. Gao, F.; Kustas, W.P.; Anderson, M.C. A Data Mining Approach for Sharpening Thermal Satellite Imagery over Land. Remote Sens. 2012, 4, 3287-3319.

Impact of Optimized Land Surface Parameters on the Land-Atmosphere Coupling in WRF Simulations of Dry and Wet Extremes

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Kumar, S.; Santanello, J. A.; Peters-Lidard, C. D.; Harrison, K.

2011-12-01

Land-atmosphere (L-A) interactions play a critical role in determining the diurnal evolution of both planetary boundary layer (PBL) and land surface temperature and moisture budgets, as well as controlling feedbacks with clouds and precipitation that lead to the persistence of dry and wet regimes. Recent efforts to quantify the strength of L-A coupling in prediction models have produced diagnostics that integrate across both the land and PBL components of the system. In this study, we examine the impact of improved specification of land surface states, anomalies, and fluxes on coupled WRF forecasts during the summers of extreme dry (2006) and wet (2007) conditions in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. The improved land initialization and surface flux parameterizations are obtained through the use of a new optimization and uncertainty module in NASA's Land Information System (LIS-OPT), whereby parameter sets are calibrated in the Noah land surface model and classified according to the land cover and soil type mapping of the observations and the full domain. The impact of the calibrated parameters on the a) spinup of land surface states used as initial conditions, and b) heat and moisture fluxes of the coupled (LIS-WRF) simulations are then assessed in terms of ambient weather, PBL budgets, and precipitation along with L-A coupling diagnostics. In addition, the sensitivity of this approach to the period of calibration (dry, wet, normal) is investigated. Finally, tradeoffs of computational tractability and scientific validity (e.g.,. relating to the representation of the spatial dependence of parameters) and the feasibility of calibrating to multiple observational datasets are also discussed.

Heterogeneous surface fluxes and their effects on the SGP CART site

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Doran, J.C.; Hu, Q.; Hubbe, J.M.; Liljegren, J.C.; Shaw, W.J.; Zhong, S.; Collatz, G.J.

1995-03-01

The treatment of subgrid-scale variations of surface properties and the resultant spatial variations of sensible and latent heat fluxes has received increasing attention in recent years. Mesoscale numerical simulations of highly idealized conditions, in which strong flux contrasts exist between adjacent surfaces, have shown that under some circumstances the secondary circulations induced by land-use differences can significantly affect the properties of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) and the region of the atmosphere above the PBL. At the Southern Great Plains (SGP) Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) site, the fluxes from different land-surface types are not expected to differ as dramatically as those found in idealized simulations. Although the corresponding effects on the atmosphere should thus be less dramatic, they are still potentially important. From an ARM perspective, in tests of single column models (SCMs) it would be useful to understand the effects of the lower boundary conditions on model performance. We describe here our initial efforts to characterize the variable surface fluxes over the CART site and to assess their effects on the PBL that are important for the performance of SCMs

Integrating satellite retrieved leaf chlorophyll into land surface models for constraining simulations of water and carbon fluxes

KAUST Repository

Houborg, Rasmus

2013-07-01

In terrestrial biosphere models, key biochemical controls on carbon uptake by vegetation canopies are typically assigned fixed literature-based values for broad categories of vegetation types although in reality significant spatial and temporal variability exists. Satellite remote sensing can support modeling efforts by offering distributed information on important land surface characteristics, which would be very difficult to obtain otherwise. This study investigates the utility of satellite based retrievals of leaf chlorophyll for estimating leaf photosynthetic capacity and for constraining model simulations of water and carbon fluxes. © 2013 IEEE.

An explanation for the different climate sensitivities of land and ocean surfaces based on the diurnal cycle

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A. Kleidon

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Observations and climate model simulations consistently show a higher climate sensitivity of land surfaces compared to ocean surfaces. Here we show that this difference in temperature sensitivity can be explained by the different means by which the diurnal variation in solar radiation is buffered. While ocean surfaces buffer the diurnal variations by heat storage changes below the surface, land surfaces buffer it mostly by heat storage changes above the surface in the lower atmosphere that are reflected in the diurnal growth of a convective boundary layer. Storage changes below the surface allow the ocean surface–atmosphere system to maintain turbulent fluxes over day and night, while the land surface–atmosphere system maintains turbulent fluxes only during the daytime hours, when the surface is heated by absorption of solar radiation. This shorter duration of turbulent fluxes on land results in a greater sensitivity of the land surface–atmosphere system to changes in the greenhouse forcing because nighttime temperatures are shaped by radiative exchange only, which are more sensitive to changes in greenhouse forcing. We use a simple, analytic energy balance model of the surface–atmosphere system in which turbulent fluxes are constrained by the maximum power limit to estimate the effects of these different means to buffer the diurnal cycle on the resulting temperature sensitivities. The model predicts that land surfaces have a 50 % greater climate sensitivity than ocean surfaces, and that the nighttime temperatures on land increase about twice as much as daytime temperatures because of the absence of turbulent fluxes at night. Both predictions compare very well with observations and CMIP5 climate model simulations. Hence, the greater climate sensitivity of land surfaces can be explained by its buffering of diurnal variations in solar radiation in the lower atmosphere.

Urban surface energy fluxes based on remotely-sensed data and micrometeorological measurements over the Kansai area, Japan

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Sukeyasu, T.; Ueyama, M.; Ando, T.; Kosugi, Y.; Kominami, Y.

2017-12-01

The urban heat island is associated with land cover changes and increases in anthropogenic heat fluxes. Clear understanding of the surface energy budget at urban area is the most important for evaluating the urban heat island. In this study, we develop a model based on remotely-sensed data for the Kansai area in Japan and clarify temporal transitions and spatial distributions of the surface energy flux from 2000 to 2016. The model calculated the surface energy fluxes based on various satellite and GIS products. The model used land surface temperature, surface emissivity, air temperature, albedo, downward shortwave radiation and land cover/use type from the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) under cloud free skies from 2000 to 2016 over the Kansai area in Japan (34 to 35 ° N, 135 to 136 ° E). Net radiation was estimated by a radiation budget of upward/downward shortwave and longwave radiation. Sensible heat flux was estimated by a bulk aerodynamic method. Anthropogenic heat flux was estimated by the inventory data. Latent heat flux was examined with residues of the energy budget and parameterization of bulk transfer coefficients. We validated the model using observed fluxes from five eddy-covariance measurement sites: three urban sites and two forested sites. The estimated net radiation roughly agreed with the observations, but the sensible heat flux were underestimated. Based on the modeled spatial distributions of the fluxes, the daytime net radiation in the forested area was larger than those in the urban area, owing to higher albedo and land surface temperatures in the urban area than the forested area. The estimated anthropogenic heat flux was high in the summer and winter periods due to increases in energy-requirements.

High-resolution Continental Scale Land Surface Model incorporating Land-water Management in United States

Science.gov (United States)

Shin, S.; Pokhrel, Y. N.

2016-12-01

Land surface models have been used to assess water resources sustainability under changing Earth environment and increasing human water needs. Overwhelming observational records indicate that human activities have ubiquitous and pertinent effects on the hydrologic cycle; however, they have been crudely represented in large scale land surface models. In this study, we enhance an integrated continental-scale land hydrology model named Leaf-Hydro-Flood to better represent land-water management. The model is implemented at high resolution (5km grids) over the continental US. Surface water and groundwater are withdrawn based on actual practices. Newly added irrigation, water diversion, and dam operation schemes allow better simulations of stream flows, evapotranspiration, and infiltration. Results of various hydrologic fluxes and stores from two sets of simulation (one with and the other without human activities) are compared over a range of river basin and aquifer scales. The improved simulations of land hydrology have potential to build consistent modeling framework for human-water-climate interactions.

Using Flux Site Observations to Calibrate Root System Architecture Stencils for Water Uptake of Plant Functional Types in Land Surface Models.

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Bouda, M.

2017-12-01

Root system architecture (RSA) can significantly affect plant access to water, total transpiration, as well as its partitioning by soil depth, with implications for surface heat, water, and carbon budgets. Despite recent advances in land surface model (LSM) descriptions of plant hydraulics, RSA has not been included because of its three-dimensional complexity, which makes RSA modelling generally too computationally costly. This work builds upon the recently introduced "RSA stencil," a process-based 1D layered model that captures the dynamic shifts in water potential gradients of 3D RSA in response to heterogeneous soil moisture profiles. In validations using root systems calibrated to the rooting profiles of four plant functional types (PFT) of the Community Land Model, the RSA stencil predicts plant water potentials within 2% of the outputs of full 3D models, despite its trivial computational cost. In transient simulations, the RSA stencil yields improved predictions of water uptake and soil moisture profiles compared to a 1D model based on root fraction alone. Here I show how the RSA stencil can be calibrated to time-series observations of soil moisture and transpiration to yield a water uptake PFT definition for use in terrestrial models. This model-data integration exercise aims to improve LSM predictions of soil moisture dynamics and, under water-limiting conditions, surface fluxes. These improvements can be expected to significantly impact predictions of downstream variables, including surface fluxes, climate-vegetation feedbacks and soil nutrient cycling.

Scaling of surface energy fluxes using remotely sensed data

Science.gov (United States)

French, Andrew Nichols

Accurate estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) across multiple terrains would greatly ease challenges faced by hydrologists, climate modelers, and agronomists as they attempt to apply theoretical models to real-world situations. One ET estimation approach uses an energy balance model to interpret a combination of meteorological observations taken at the surface and data captured by remote sensors. However, results of this approach have not been accurate because of poor understanding of the relationship between surface energy flux and land cover heterogeneity, combined with limits in available resolution of remote sensors. The purpose of this study was to determine how land cover and image resolution affect ET estimates. Using remotely sensed data collected over El Reno, Oklahoma, during four days in June and July 1997, scale effects on the estimation of spatially distributed ET were investigated. Instantaneous estimates of latent and sensible heat flux were calculated using a two-source surface energy balance model driven by thermal infrared, visible-near infrared, and meteorological data. The heat flux estimates were verified by comparison to independent eddy-covariance observations. Outcomes of observations taken at coarser resolutions were simulated by aggregating remote sensor data and estimated surface energy balance components from the finest sensor resolution (12 meter) to hypothetical resolutions as coarse as one kilometer. Estimated surface energy flux components were found to be significantly dependent on observation scale. For example, average evaporative fraction varied from 0.79, using 12-m resolution data, to 0.93, using 1-km resolution data. Resolution effects upon flux estimates were related to a measure of landscape heterogeneity known as operational scale, reflecting the size of dominant landscape features. Energy flux estimates based on data at resolutions less than 100 m and much greater than 400 m showed a scale-dependent bias. But estimates

Comparison of Sensible Heat Flux from Eddy Covariance and Scintillometer over different land surface conditions

Science.gov (United States)

Zeweldi, D. A.; Gebremichael, M.; Summis, T.; Wang, J.; Miller, D.

2008-12-01

The large source of uncertainty in satellite-based evapotranspiration algorithm results from the estimation of sensible heat flux H. Traditionally eddy covariance sensors, and recently large-aperture scintillometers, have been used as ground truth to evaluate satellite-based H estimates. The two methods rely on different physical measurement principles, and represent different foot print sizes. In New Mexico, we conducted a field campaign during summer 2008 to compare H estimates obtained from the eddy covariance and scintillometer methods. During this field campaign, we installed sonic anemometers; one propeller eddy covariance (OPEC) equipped with net radiometer and soil heat flux sensors; large aperture scintillometer (LAS); and weather station consisting of wind speed, direction and radiation sensors over three different experimental areas consisting of different roughness conditions (desert, irrigated area and lake). Our results show the similarities and differences in H estimates obtained from these various methods over the different land surface conditions. Further, our results show that the H estimates obtained from the LAS agree with those obtained from the eddy covariance method when high frequency thermocouple temperature, instead of the typical weather station temperature measurements, is used in the LAS analysis.

The Plumbing of Land Surface Models: Is Poor Performance a Result of Methodology or Data Quality?

Science.gov (United States)

Haughton, Ned; Abramowitz, Gab; Pitman, Andy J.; Or, Dani; Best, Martin J.; Johnson, Helen R.; Balsamo, Gianpaolo; Boone, Aaron; Cuntz, Matthais; Decharme, Bertrand;

Evaluating the influence of plant-specific physiological parameterizations on the partitioning of land surface energy fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Sulis, Mauro; Langensiepen, Matthias; Shrestha, Prabhakar; Schickling, Anke; Simmer, Clemens; Kollet, Stefan

2015-04-01

Vegetation has a significant influence on the partitioning of radiative forcing, the spatial and temporal variability of soil water and soil temperature. Therefore plant physiological properties play a key role in mediating and amplifying interactions and feedback mechanisms in the soil-vegetation-atmosphere continuum. Because of the direct impact on latent heat fluxes, these properties may also influence weather generating processes, such as the evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). In land surface models, plant physiological properties are usually obtained from literature synthesis by unifying several plant/crop species in predefined vegetation classes. In this work, crop-specific physiological characteristics, retrieved from detailed field measurements, are included in the bio-physical parameterization of the Community Land Model (CLM), which is a component of the Terrestrial Systems Modeling Platform (TerrSysMP). The measured set of parameters for two typical European mid-latitudinal crops (sugar beet and winter wheat) is validated using eddy covariance measurements (sensible heat and latent heat) over multiple years from three measurement sites located in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, Germany. We found clear improvements of CLM simulations, when using the crop-specific physiological characteristics of the plants instead of the generic crop type when compared to the measurements. In particular, the increase of latent heat fluxes in conjunction with decreased sensible heat fluxes as simulated by the two new crop-specific parameter sets leads to an improved quantification of the diurnal energy partitioning. These findings are cross-validated using estimates of gross primary production extracted from net ecosystem exchange measurements. This independent analysis reveals that the better agreement between observed and simulated latent heat using the plant-specific physiological properties largely stems from an improved simulation of the

Atmospheric sensitivity to land surface changes: comparing the impact of albedo, roughness, and evaporative resistance on near-surface air temperature using an idealized land model.

Science.gov (United States)

Lague, M. M.; Swann, A. L. S.; Bonan, G. B.

2017-12-01

Past studies have demonstrated how changes in vegetation can impact the atmosphere; however, it is often difficult to identify the exact physical pathway through which vegetation changes drive an atmospheric response. Surface properties (such as vegetation color, or height) control surface energy fluxes, which feed back on the atmosphere on both local and global scales by modifying temperatures, cloud cover, and energy gradients. Understanding how land surface properties influence energy fluxes is crucial for improving our understanding of how vegetation change - past, present, and future - impacts the atmosphere, global climate, and people. We explore the sensitivity of the atmosphere to perturbations of three land surface properties - albedo, roughness, and evaporative resistance - using an idealized land model coupled to an Earth System Model. We derive a relationship telling us how large a change in each surface property is required to drive a local 0.1 K change in 2m air temperature. Using this idealized framework, we are able to separate the influence on the atmosphere of each individual surface property. We demonstrate that the impact of each surface property on the atmosphere is spatially variable - that is, a similar change in vegetation can have different climate impacts if made in different locations. This analysis not only improves our understanding of how the land system can influence climate, but also provides us with a set of theoretical limits on the potential climate impact of arbitrary vegetation change (natural or anthropogenic).

Permafrost thaw and fire history: implications of boreal tree cover changes on land surface properties and turbulent energy fluxes in the Taiga Plains, Canada

Science.gov (United States)

Sonnentag, Oliver; Helbig, Manuel; Payette, Fanny; Wischnewski, Karoline; Kljun, Natascha; Chasmer, Laura; Pappas, Christoforos; Detto, Matteo; Baltzer, Jennifer; Quinton, William; Marsh, Philip

2016-04-01

Given their large areal coverage, high carbon densities, and unique land surface properties and disturbance regimes (e.g., wildfires), the world's boreal forests are integral components of the global and regional climate systems. A large portion of boreal forests contain permafrost, i.e., perennially cryotic ground. In the Taiga Plains ecozone in northwestern Canada, the northernmost boreal forests grow on cold (100 m) continuous permafrost (>90 % in areal extent). More southerly boreal forests occur in areas with discontinuous (>50 - 90 % in areal extent), sporadic (>10 - 50 % in areal extent) and isolated permafrost (<10 % in areal extent). Using annual MODIS Percent Tree Cover (PTC) data from the MOD44B product in combination with spatial information on fire history, and permafrost and drainage characteristics, we show that in low-lying, poorly-drained areas along the southern fringe of permafrost, thawing induces widespread decreases in PTC and dominates over PTC increases due to post-fire regrowth. In contrast, PTC appears to be slightly increasing in the central and northern Taiga Plains with more stable discontinuous and continuous permafrost, respectively. While these increases are partly explained by post-fire regrowth, more favourable growing conditions may also contribute to increasing PTC. To better understand the implications of permafrost thaw on land surface properties (e.g., aerodynamic conductance for heat [ga] and surface conductance for water vapour [gs]), and the turbulent fluxes of latent (LE) and sensible heat (H) along the southern fringe of permafrost, we examined nested eddy covariance flux measurements made at two nearby locations at Scotty Creek (61°18' N; 121°18' W) starting May 2013. The low-lying, poorly-drained southern portion of this 152 km2-watershed contains rapidly thawing sporadic permafrost resulting in a highly dynamic mosaic dominated by decreasing forested permafrost peat plateaus, and increasing permafrost-free wetlands

Simulated Effects of Land Cover Conversion on the Surface Energy Budget in the Southwest of China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiangbo Gao

2014-03-01

Full Text Available In this paper, the coupled WRF/SSiB model, accompanied by a Karst Rocky Desertification (KRD map of the Guizhou Karst Plateau (GKP of China, was applied to detect how the changed vegetation and soil characteristics over the GKP modify the energy balance at the land surface. The results indicated that land degradation led to reduced net radiation by inducing more upward shortwave and longwave radiation, which were associated with increasing surface albedo and temperature, respectively. The KRD also resulted in changed surface energy partitioning into sensible and latent heat fluxes. The latent heat flux at land surface was reduced substantially due to the higher surface albedo and stomatal resistance, the lower Leaf Area Index (LAI and roughness length in the degradation experiment, while the sensible heat flux increased, mainly because of the higher surface temperature. Furthermore, the moisture flux convergence was reduced, owing to the lower atmospheric heating and the relative subsidence. However, compared with the reduced evaporation, the decrease in moisture flux convergence contributed much less to the reduced precipitation. Precipitation strongly affects soil moisture, vegetation growth and phenology, and thus evaporation and convective latent heating, so when precipitation was changed, a feedback loop was created.

Estimating carbon flux phenology with satellite-derived land surface phenology and climate drivers for different biomes: a synthesis of AmeriFlux observations.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wenquan Zhu

Full Text Available Carbon Flux Phenology (CFP can affect the interannual variation in Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE of carbon between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this study, we proposed a methodology to estimate CFP metrics with satellite-derived Land Surface Phenology (LSP metrics and climate drivers for 4 biomes (i.e., deciduous broadleaf forest, evergreen needleleaf forest, grasslands and croplands, using 159 site-years of NEE and climate data from 32 AmeriFlux sites and MODIS vegetation index time-series data. LSP metrics combined with optimal climate drivers can explain the variability in Start of Carbon Uptake (SCU by more than 70% and End of Carbon Uptake (ECU by more than 60%. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE of the estimations was within 8.5 days for both SCU and ECU. The estimation performance for this methodology was primarily dependent on the optimal combination of the LSP retrieval methods, the explanatory climate drivers, the biome types, and the specific CFP metric. This methodology has a potential for allowing extrapolation of CFP metrics for biomes with a distinct and detectable seasonal cycle over large areas, based on synoptic multi-temporal optical satellite data and climate data.

Advancements in Modelling of Land Surface Energy Fluxes with Remote Sensing at Different Spatial Scales

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Guzinski, Radoslaw

uxes, such as sensible heat ux, ground heat ux and net radiation, are also necessary. While it is possible to measure those uxes with ground-based instruments at local scales, at region scales they usually need to be modelled or estimated with the help of satellite remote sensing data. Even though...... to increase the spatial resolution of the reliable DTD-modelled fluxes from 1 km to 30 m. Furthermore, synergies between remote sensing based models and distributed hydrological models were studied with the aim of improving spatial performance of the hydrological models through incorporation of remote sensing...... of this study was to look at, and improve, various approaches for modelling the land-surface energy uxes at different spatial scales. The work was done using physically-based Two-Source Energy Balance (TSEB) approach as well as semi-empirical \\Triangle" approach. The TSEB-based approach was the main focus...

Afforestation in China cools local land surface temperature

OpenAIRE

Peng, Shu-Shi; Piao, Shilong; Zeng, Zhenzhong; Ciais, Philippe; Zhou, Liming; Li, Laurent Z. X.; Myneni, Ranga B.; Yin, Yi; Zeng, Hui

2014-01-01

International audience; China has the largest afforested area in the world (~62 million hectares in 2008), and these forests are carbon sinks. The climatic effect of these new forests depends on how radiant and turbulent energy fluxes over these plantations modify surface temperature. For instance, a lower albedo may cause warming, which negates the climatic benefits of carbon sequestration. Here, we used satellite measurements of land surface temperature (LST) from planted forests and adjace...

Impacts of historic and projected land-cover, land-use, and land-management change on carbon and water fluxes: The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP)

Science.gov (United States)

Lawrence, D. M.; Lombardozzi, D. L.; Lawrence, P.; Hurtt, G. C.

2017-12-01

Human land-use activities have resulted in large changes to the Earth surface, with resulting implications for climate. In the future, land-use activities are likely to intensify to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) aims to further advance understanding of the broad question of impacts of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) as well as more detailed science questions to get at process-level attribution, uncertainty, and data requirements in more depth and sophistication than possible in a multi-model context to date. LUMIP is multi-faceted and aims to advance our understanding of land-use change from several perspectives. In particular, LUMIP includes a factorial set of land-only simulations that differ from each other with respect to the specific treatment of land use or land management (e.g., irrigation active or not, crop fertilization active or not, wood harvest on or not), or in terms of prescribed climate. This factorial series of experiments serves several purposes and is designed to provide a detailed assessment of how the specification of land-cover change and land management affects the carbon, water, and energy cycle response to land-use change. The potential analyses that are possible through this set of experiments are vast. For example, comparing a control experiment with all land management active to an experiment with no irrigation allows a multi-model assessment of whether or not the increasing use of irrigation during the 20th century is likely to have significantly altered trends of regional water and energy fluxes (and therefore climate) and/or crop yield and carbon fluxes in agricultural regions. Here, we will present preliminary results from the factorial set of experiments utilizing the Community Land Model (CLM5). The analyses presented here will help guide multi-model analyses once the full set of LUMIP simulations are available.

Soil surface CO2 fluxes and the carbon budget of a grassland

Science.gov (United States)

Norman, J. M.; Garcia, R.; Verma, S. B.

1992-01-01

Measurements of soil surface CO2 fluxes are reported for three sites within the First International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) Field Experiment (FIFE) area, and simple empirical equations are fit to the data to provide predictions of soil fluxes from environmental observations. A prototype soil chamber, used to make the flux measurements, is described and tested by comparing CO2 flux measurements to a 40-L chamber, a 1-m/cu chamber, and eddy correlation. Results suggest that flux measurements with the prototype chamber are consistent with measurements by other methods to within about 20 percent. A simple empirical equation based on 10-cm soil temperature, 0- to 10-cm soil volumetric water content, and leaf area index predicts the soil surface CO2 flux with a rms error of 1.2 micro-mol sq m/s for all three sites. Further evidence supports using this equation to evaluate soil surface CO2 during the 1987 FIFE experiment. The soil surface CO2 fluxes when averaged over 24 hours are comparable to daily gross canopy photosynthetic rates. For 6 days of data the net daily accumulation of carbon is about 0.6 g CO2 sq m/d; this is only a few percent of the daily gross accumulation of carbon by photosynthesis. As the soil became drier in 1989, the net accumulation of carbon by the prairie increased, suggesting that the soil flux is more sensitive to temperature and drought than the photosynthetic fluxes.

Some practical notes on the land surface modeling in the Tibetan Plateau

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. Yang

2009-05-01

Full Text Available The Tibetan Plateau is a key region of land-atmosphere interactions, as it provides an elevated heat source to the middle-troposphere. The Plateau surfaces are typically characterized by alpine meadows and grasslands in the central and eastern part while by alpine deserts in the western part. This study evaluates performance of three state-of-the-art land surface models (LSMs for the Plateau typical land surfaces. The LSMs of interest are SiB2 (the Simple Biosphere, CoLM (Common Land Model, and Noah. They are run at typical alpine meadow sites in the central Plateau and typical alpine desert sites in the western Plateau.

The identified key processes and modeling issues are as follows. First, soil stratification is a typical phenomenon beneath the alpine meadows, with dense roots and soil organic matters within the topsoil, and it controls the profile of soil moisture in the central and eastern Plateau; all models, when using default parameters, significantly under-estimate the soil moisture within the topsoil. Second, a soil surface resistance controls the surface evaporation from the alpine deserts but it has not been reasonably modeled in LSMs; an advanced scheme for soil water flow is implemented in a LSM, based on which the soil resistance is determined from soil water content and meteorological conditions. Third, an excess resistance controls sensible heat fluxes from dry bare-soil or sparsely vegetated surfaces, and all LSMs significantly under-predict the ground-air temperature gradient, which would result in higher net radiation, lower soil heat fluxes and thus higher sensible heat fluxes in the models. A parameterization scheme for this resistance has been shown to be effective to remove these biases.

Estimation of Key Parameters of the Coupled Energy and Water Model by Assimilating Land Surface Data

Science.gov (United States)

Abdolghafoorian, A.; Farhadi, L.

2017-12-01

Accurate estimation of land surface heat and moisture fluxes, as well as root zone soil moisture, is crucial in various hydrological, meteorological, and agricultural applications. Field measurements of these fluxes are costly and cannot be readily scaled to large areas relevant to weather and climate studies. Therefore, there is a need for techniques to make quantitative estimates of heat and moisture fluxes using land surface state observations that are widely available from remote sensing across a range of scale. In this work, we applies the variational data assimilation approach to estimate land surface fluxes and soil moisture profile from the implicit information contained Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Soil Moisture (SM) (hereafter the VDA model). The VDA model is focused on the estimation of three key parameters: 1- neutral bulk heat transfer coefficient (CHN), 2- evaporative fraction from soil and canopy (EF), and 3- saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat). CHN and EF regulate the partitioning of available energy between sensible and latent heat fluxes. Ksat is one of the main parameters used in determining infiltration, runoff, groundwater recharge, and in simulating hydrological processes. In this study, a system of coupled parsimonious energy and water model will constrain the estimation of three unknown parameters in the VDA model. The profile of SM (LST) at multiple depths is estimated using moisture diffusion (heat diffusion) equation. In this study, the uncertainties of retrieved unknown parameters and fluxes are estimated from the inverse of Hesian matrix of cost function which is computed using the Lagrangian methodology. Analysis of uncertainty provides valuable information about the accuracy of estimated parameters and their correlation and guide the formulation of a well-posed estimation problem. The results of proposed algorithm are validated with a series of experiments using a synthetic data set generated by the simultaneous heat and

Climate Impacts of Fire-Induced Land-Surface Changes

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Y.; Hao, X.; Qu, J. J.

2017-12-01

One of the consequences of wildfires is the changes in land-surface properties such as removal of vegetation. This will change local and regional climate through modifying the land-air heat and water fluxes. This study investigates mechanism by developing and a parameterization of fire-induced land-surface property changes and applying it to modeling of the climate impacts of large wildfires in the United States. Satellite remote sensing was used to quantitatively evaluate the land-surface changes from large fires provided from the Monitoring Trends in Burning Severity (MTBS) dataset. It was found that the changes in land-surface properties induced by fires are very complex, depending on vegetation type and coverage, climate type, season and time after fires. The changes in LAI are remarkable only if the actual values meet a threshold. Large albedo changes occur in winter for fires in cool climate regions. The signs are opposite between the first post-fire year and the following years. Summer day-time temperature increases after fires, while nigh-time temperature changes in various patterns. The changes are larger in forested lands than shrub / grassland lands. In the parameterization scheme, the detected post-fire changes are decomposed into trends using natural exponential functions and fluctuations of periodic variations with the amplitudes also determined by natural exponential functions. The final algorithm is a combination of the trends, periods, and amplitude functions. This scheme is used with Earth system models to simulate the local and regional climate effects of wildfires.

Soil Surface Runoff Scheme for Improving Land-Hydrology and Surface Fluxes in Simple SiB (SSiB)

Science.gov (United States)

Sud, Y. C.; Mocko, David M.

1999-01-01

Evapotranspiration on land is hard to measure and difficult to simulate. On the scale of a GCM grid, there is large subgrid-scale variability of orography, soil moisture, and vegetation. Our hope is to be able to tune the biophysical constants of vegetation and soil parameters to get the most realistic space-averaged diurnal cycle of evaporation and its climatology. Field experiments such as First ISLSCP Field Experiment (FIFE), Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS), and LBA help a great deal in improving our evapotranspiration schemes. However, these improvements have to be matched with, and coupled to, consistent improvement in land-hydrology; otherwise, the runoff problems will intrinsically reflect on the soil moisture and evapotranspiration errors. Indeed, a realistic runoff simulation also ensures a reasonable evapotranspiration simulation provided the precipitation forcing is reliable. We have been working on all of the above problems to improve the simulated hydrologic cycle. Through our participation in the evaluation and intercomparison of land-models under the behest of Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP), we identified a few problems with Simple SiB (SSIB; Xue et al., 1991) hydrology in regions of significant snowmelt. Sud and Mocko (1999) show that inclusion of a separate snowpack model, with its own energy budget and fluxes with the atmosphere aloft and soil beneath, helps to ameliorate some of the deficiencies of delayed snowmelt and excessive spring season runoff. Thus, much more realistic timing of melt water generation was simulated with the new snowpack model in the subsequent GSWP re-evaluations using 2 years of ISLSCP Initiative I forcing data for 1987 and 1988. However, we noted an overcorrection of the low meltwater infiltration of SSiB. While the improvement in snowmelt timing was found everywhere, the snowmelt infiltration has became excessive in some regions, e.g., Lena river basin. This leads to much reduced runoff in many basins as

Relevance of methodological choices for accounting of land use change carbon fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Pongratz, Julia; Hansis, Eberhard; Davis, Steven

2015-04-01

To understand and potentially steer how humans shape land-climate interactions it is important to accurately attribute greenhouse gas fluxes from land use and land cover change (LULCC) in space and time. However, such accounting of carbon fluxes from LULCC generally requires choosing from multiple options of how to attribute the fluxes to regions and to LULCC activities. Applying a newly-developed and spatially-explicit bookkeeping model, BLUE ("bookkeeping of land use emissions"), we quantify LULCC carbon fluxes and attribute them to land-use activities and countries by a range of different accounting methods. We present results with respect to a Kyoto Protocol-like ``commitment'' accounting period, using land use emissions of 2008-12 as example scenario. We assess the effect of accounting methods that vary (1) the temporal evolution of carbon stocks, (2) the state of the carbon stocks at the beginning of the period, (3) the temporal attribution of carbon fluxes during the period, and (4) treatment of LULCC fluxes that occurred prior to the beginning of the period. We show that the methodological choices result in grossly different estimates of carbon fluxes for the different attribution definitions. The global net flux in the accounting period varies between 4.3 Pg(C) uptake and 15.2 Pg(C) emissions, depending on the accounting method. Regional results show different modes of variation. This finding has implications for both political and scientific considerations: Not all methodological choices are currently specified under the UNFCCC treaties on land use, land-use change and forestry. Yet, a consistent accounting scheme is crucial to assure comparability of individual LULCC activities, quantify their relevance for the global annual carbon budget, and assess the effects of LULCC policies.

Research on Land Surface Thermal-Hydrologic Exchange in Southern China under Future Climate and Land Cover Scenarios

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianwu Yan

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Climate change inevitably leads to changes in hydrothermal circulation. However, thermal-hydrologic exchanging caused by land cover change has also undergone ineligible changes. Therefore, studying the comprehensive effects of climate and land cover changes on land surface water and heat exchanges enables us to well understand the formation mechanism of regional climate and predict climate change with fewer uncertainties. This study investigated the land surface thermal-hydrologic exchange across southern China for the next 40 years using a land surface model (ecosystem-atmosphere simulation scheme (EASS. Our findings are summarized as follows. (i Spatiotemporal variation patterns of sensible heat flux (H and evapotranspiration (ET under the land cover scenarios (A2a or B2a and climate change scenario (A1B are unanimous. (ii Both H and ET take on a single peak pattern, and the peak occurs in June or July. (iii Based on the regional interannual variability analysis, H displays a downward trend (10% and ET presents an increasing trend (15%. (iv The annual average H and ET would, respectively, increase and decrease by about 10% when woodland converts to the cultivated land. Through this study, we recognize that land surface water and heat exchanges are affected greatly by the future climate change as well as land cover change.

Monte Carlo surface flux tallies

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Favorite, Jeffrey A.

2010-01-01

Particle fluxes on surfaces are difficult to calculate with Monte Carlo codes because the score requires a division by the surface-crossing angle cosine, and grazing angles lead to inaccuracies. We revisit the standard practice of dividing by half of a cosine 'cutoff' for particles whose surface-crossing cosines are below the cutoff. The theory behind this approximation is sound, but the application of the theory to all possible situations does not account for two implicit assumptions: (1) the grazing band must be symmetric about 0, and (2) a single linear expansion for the angular flux must be applied in the entire grazing band. These assumptions are violated in common circumstances; for example, for separate in-going and out-going flux tallies on internal surfaces, and for out-going flux tallies on external surfaces. In some situations, dividing by two-thirds of the cosine cutoff is more appropriate. If users were able to control both the cosine cutoff and the substitute value, they could use these parameters to make accurate surface flux tallies. The procedure is demonstrated in a test problem in which Monte Carlo surface fluxes in cosine bins are converted to angular fluxes and compared with the results of a discrete ordinates calculation.

Pairing FLUXNET sites to validate model representations of land-use/land-cover change

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Liang; Dirmeyer, Paul A.; Guo, Zhichang; Schultz, Natalie M.

2018-01-01

Land surface energy and water fluxes play an important role in land-atmosphere interactions, especially for the climatic feedback effects driven by land-use/land-cover change (LULCC). These have long been documented in model-based studies, but the performance of land surface models in representing LULCC-induced responses has not been investigated well. In this study, measurements from proximate paired (open versus forest) flux tower sites are used to represent observed deforestation-induced changes in surface fluxes, which are compared with simulations from the Community Land Model (CLM) and the Noah Multi-Parameterization (Noah-MP) land model. Point-scale simulations suggest the CLM can represent the observed diurnal and seasonal changes in net radiation (Rnet) and ground heat flux (G), but difficulties remain in the energy partitioning between latent (LE) and sensible (H) heat flux. The CLM does not capture the observed decreased daytime LE, and overestimates the increased H during summer. These deficiencies are mainly associated with models' greater biases over forest land-cover types and the parameterization of soil evaporation. Global gridded simulations with the CLM show uncertainties in the estimation of LE and H at the grid level for regional and global simulations. Noah-MP exhibits a similar ability to simulate the surface flux changes, but with larger biases in H, G, and Rnet change during late winter and early spring, which are related to a deficiency in estimating albedo. Differences in meteorological conditions between paired sites is not a factor in these results. Attention needs to be devoted to improving the representation of surface heat flux processes in land models to increase confidence in LULCC simulations.

Soil Structure - A Neglected Component of Land-Surface Models

Science.gov (United States)

Fatichi, S.; Or, D.; Walko, R. L.; Vereecken, H.; Kollet, S. J.; Young, M.; Ghezzehei, T. A.; Hengl, T.; Agam, N.; Avissar, R.

2017-12-01

Soil structure is largely absent in most standard sampling and measurements and in the subsequent parameterization of soil hydraulic properties deduced from soil maps and used in Earth System Models. The apparent omission propagates into the pedotransfer functions that deduce parameters of soil hydraulic properties primarily from soil textural information. Such simple parameterization is an essential ingredient in the practical application of any land surface model. Despite the critical role of soil structure (biopores formed by decaying roots, aggregates, etc.) in defining soil hydraulic functions, only a few studies have attempted to incorporate soil structure into models. They mostly looked at the effects on preferential flow and solute transport pathways at the soil profile scale; yet, the role of soil structure in mediating large-scale fluxes remains understudied. Here, we focus on rectifying this gap and demonstrating potential impacts on surface and subsurface fluxes and system wide eco-hydrologic responses. The study proposes a systematic way for correcting the soil water retention and hydraulic conductivity functions—accounting for soil-structure—with major implications for near saturated hydraulic conductivity. Modification to the basic soil hydraulic parameterization is assumed as a function of biological activity summarized by Gross Primary Production. A land-surface model with dynamic vegetation is used to carry out numerical simulations with and without the role of soil-structure for 20 locations characterized by different climates and biomes across the globe. Including soil structure affects considerably the partition between infiltration and runoff and consequently leakage at the base of the soil profile (recharge). In several locations characterized by wet climates, a few hundreds of mm per year of surface runoff become deep-recharge accounting for soil-structure. Changes in energy fluxes, total evapotranspiration and vegetation productivity

Towards Global Simulation of Irrigation in a Land Surface Model: Multiple Cropping and Rice Paddy in Southeast Asia

Science.gov (United States)

Beaudoing, Hiroko Kato; Rodell, Matthew; Ozdogan, Mutlu

2010-01-01

Agricultural land use significantly influences the surface water and energy balances. Effects of irrigation on land surface states and fluxes include repartitioning of latent and sensible heat fluxes, an increase in net radiation, and an increase in soil moisture and runoff. We are working on representing irrigation practices in continental- to global-scale land surface simulation in NASA's Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). Because agricultural practices across the nations are diverse, and complex, we are attempting to capture the first-order reality of the regional practices before achieving a global implementation. This study focuses on two issues in Southeast Asia: multiple cropping and rice paddy irrigation systems. We first characterize agricultural practices in the region (i.e., crop types, growing seasons, and irrigation) using the Global data set of monthly irrigated and rainfed crop areas around the year 2000 (MIRCA2000) dataset. Rice paddy extent is identified using remote sensing products. Whether irrigated or rainfed, flooded fields need to be represented and treated explicitly. By incorporating these properties and processes into a physically based land surface model, we are able to quantify the impacts on the simulated states and fluxes.

Modelling land surface - atmosphere interactions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Søren Højmark

representation of groundwater in the hydrological model is found to important and this imply resolving the small river valleys. Because, the important shallow groundwater is found in the river valleys. If the model does not represent the shallow groundwater then the area mean surface flux calculation......The study is investigates modelling of land surface – atmosphere interactions in context of fully coupled climatehydrological model. With a special focus of under what condition a fully coupled model system is needed. Regional climate model inter-comparison projects as ENSEMBLES have shown bias...... by the hydrological model is found to be insensitive to model resolution. Furthermore, this study highlights the effect of bias precipitation by regional climate model and it implications for hydrological modelling....

Effects of Seasonal Land Surface Conditions on Hydrometeorological Dynamics in South-western North America

Science.gov (United States)

2015-09-21

rain gauges to measure precipitation , and 1 internal mini-flume to measure runoff . 9 Fig. 8. Processed fluxes measured at the two eddy...SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: Arid and semiarid landscapes in regions with seasonal precipitation experience dramatic changes that alter land surface...semiarid landscapes in regions with seasonal precipitation experience dramatic changes that alter land surface conditions, including soil moisture

Assessment and Enhancement of MERRA Land Surface Hydrology Estimates

Science.gov (United States)

Reichle, Rolf H.; Koster, Randal D.; deLannoy, Gabrielle J. M.; Forman, Barton A.; Liu, Qing; Mahanama, Sarith P. P.; Toure, Ally

2012-01-01

The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) is a state-ofthe-art reanalysis that provides, in addition to atmospheric fields, global estimates of soil moisture, latent heat flux, snow, and runoff for 1979-present. This study introduces a supplemental and improved set of land surface hydrological fields ("MERRA-Land") generated by re-running a revised version of the land component of the MERRA system. Specifically, the MERRA-Land estimates benefit from corrections to the precipitation forcing with the Global Precipitation Climatology Project pentad product (version 2.1) and from revised parameter values in the rainfall interception model, changes that effectively correct for known limitations in the MERRA surface meteorological forcings. The skill (defined as the correlation coefficient of the anomaly time series) in land surface hydrological fields from MERRA and MERRA-Land is assessed here against observations and compared to the skill of the state-of-the-art ERA-Interim (ERA-I) reanalysis. MERRA-Land and ERA-I root zone soil moisture skills (against in situ observations at 85 US stations) are comparable and significantly greater than that of MERRA. Throughout the northern hemisphere, MERRA and MERRA-Land agree reasonably well with in situ snow depth measurements (from 583 stations) and with snow water equivalent from an independent analysis. Runoff skill (against naturalized stream flow observations from 18 US basins) of MERRA and MERRA-Land is typically higher than that of ERA-I. With a few exceptions, the MERRA-Land data appear more accurate than the original MERRA estimates and are thus recommended for those interested in using MERRA output for land surface hydrological studies.

A comprehensive set of benchmark tests for a land surface model of simultaneous fluxes of water and carbon at both the global and seasonal scale

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

E. Blyth

2011-04-01

Full Text Available Evaluating the models we use in prediction is important as it allows us to identify uncertainties in prediction as well as guiding the priorities for model development. This paper describes a set of benchmark tests that is designed to quantify the performance of the land surface model that is used in the UK Hadley Centre General Circulation Model (JULES: Joint UK Land Environment Simulator. The tests are designed to assess the ability of the model to reproduce the observed fluxes of water and carbon at the global and regional spatial scale, and on a seasonal basis. Five datasets are used to test the model: water and carbon dioxide fluxes from ten FLUXNET sites covering the major global biomes, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at four representative stations from the global network, river flow from seven catchments, the seasonal mean NDVI over the seven catchments and the potential land cover of the globe (after the estimated anthropogenic changes have been removed. The model is run in various configurations and results are compared with the data.

A few examples are chosen to demonstrate the importance of using combined use of observations of carbon and water fluxes in essential in order to understand the causes of model errors. The benchmarking approach is suitable for application to other global models.

Atmospheric inversion of the surface CO2 flux with 13CO2 constraint

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, J. M.; Mo, G.; Deng, F.

2013-10-01

Observations of 13CO2 at 73 sites compiled in the GLOBALVIEW database are used for an additional constraint in a global atmospheric inversion of the surface CO2 flux using CO2 observations at 210 sites for the 2002-2004 period for 39 land regions and 11 ocean regions. This constraint is implemented using the 13CO2/CO2 flux ratio modeled with a terrestrial ecosystem model and an ocean model. These models simulate 13CO2 discrimination rates of terrestrial photosynthesis and respiration and ocean-atmosphere diffusion processes. In both models, the 13CO2 disequilibrium between fluxes to and from the atmosphere is considered due to the historical change in atmospheric 13CO2 concentration. For the 2002-2004 period, the 13CO2 constraint on the inversion increases the total land carbon sink from 3.40 to 3.70 Pg C yr-1 and decreases the total oceanic carbon sink from 1.48 to 1.12 Pg C yr-1. The largest changes occur in tropical areas: a considerable decrease in the carbon source in the Amazon forest, and this decrease is mostly compensated by increases in the ocean region immediately west of the Amazon and the southeast Asian land region. Our further investigation through different treatments of the 13CO2/CO2 flux ratio used in the inversion suggests that variable spatial distributions of the 13CO2 isotopic discrimination rate simulated by the models over land and ocean have considerable impacts on the spatial distribution of the inverted CO2 flux over land and the inversion results are not sensitive to errors in the estimated disequilibria over land and ocean.

Reconnoitering the effect of shallow groundwater on land surface temperature and surface energy balance using MODIS and SEBS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Alkhaier

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The possibility of observing shallow groundwater depth and areal extent using satellite measurements can support groundwater models and vast irrigation systems management. Moreover, these measurements can help to include the effect of shallow groundwater on surface energy balance within land surface models and climate studies, which broadens the methods that yield more reliable and informative results. To examine the capacity of MODIS in detecting the effect of shallow groundwater on land surface temperature and the surface energy balance in an area within Al-Balikh River basin in northern Syria, we studied the interrelationship between in-situ measured water table depths and land surface temperatures measured by MODIS. We, also, used the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS to calculate surface energy fluxes, evaporative fraction and daily evaporation, and inspected their relationships with water table depths. We found out that the daytime temperature increased while the nighttime temperature decreased when the depth of the water table increased. And, when the water table depth increased, net radiation, latent and ground heat fluxes, evaporative fraction and daily evaporation decreased, while sensible heat flux increased. This concords with the findings of a companion paper (Alkhaier et al., 2012. The observed clear relationships were the result of meeting both conditions that were concluded in the companion paper, i.e. high potential evaporation and big contrast in day-night temperature. Moreover, the prevailing conditions in this study area helped SEBS to yield accurate estimates. Under bare soil conditions and under the prevailing weather conditions, we conclude that MODIS is suitable for detecting the effect of shallow groundwater because it has proper imaging times and adequate sensor accuracy; nevertheless, its coarse spatial resolution is disadvantageous.

The surface energy, water, carbon flux and their intercorrelated seasonality in a global climate-vegetation coupled model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Dan.; Jinjun Ji

2007-01-01

The sensible and latent heat fluxes, representatives of the physical exchange processes of energy and water between land and air, are the two crucial variables controlling the surface energy partitioning related to temperature and humidity. The net primary production (NPP), the major carbon flux exchange between vegetation and atmosphere, is of great importance for the terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle. The fluxes are simulated by a two-way coupled model, Atmosphere-Vegetation Interaction Model-Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System Model (AVIM-GOALS) in which the surface physical and physiological processes are coupled with general circulation model (GCM), and the global spatial and temporal variation of the fluxes is studied. The simulated terrestrial surface physical fluxes are consistent with the 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis (ERA40) in the global distribution, but the magnitudes are generally 20-40 W/m 2 underestimated. The annual NPP agrees well with the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) NPP data except for the lower value in northern high latitudes. The surface physical fluxes, leaf area index (LAI) and NPP of the global mid-latitudes, especially between 30 deg N-50 deg N, show great variation in annual oscillation amplitudes. And all physical and biological fields in northern mid-latitudes have the largest seasonality with a high statistical significance of 99.9%. The seasonality of surface physical fluxes, LAI and NPP are highly correlated with each other. The meridional three-peak pattern of seasonal change emerges in northern mid-latitudes, which indicates the interaction of topographical gradient variation of surface fluxes and vegetation phenology on these three latitudinal belts

Stable water isotope and surface heat flux simulation using ISOLSM: Evaluation against in-situ measurements

KAUST Repository

Cai, Mick Y.; Wang, Lixin; Parkes, Stephen; Strauss, Josiah; McCabe, Matthew; Evans, Jason P.; Griffiths, Alan D.

2015-01-01

The stable isotopes of water are useful tracers of water sources and hydrological processes. Stable water isotope-enabled land surface modeling is a relatively new approach for characterizing the hydrological cycle, providing spatial and temporal variability for a number of hydrological processes. At the land surface, the integration of stable water isotopes with other meteorological measurements can assist in constraining surface heat flux estimates and discriminate between evaporation (E) and transpiration (T). However, research in this area has traditionally been limited by a lack of continuous in-situ isotopic observations. Here, the National Centre for Atmospheric Research stable isotope-enabled Land Surface Model (ISOLSM) is used to simulate the water and energy fluxes and stable water isotope variations. The model was run for a period of one month with meteorological data collected from a coastal sub-tropical site near Sydney, Australia. The modeled energy fluxes (latent heat and sensible heat) agreed reasonably well with eddy covariance observations, indicating that ISOLSM has the capacity to reproduce observed flux behavior. Comparison of modeled isotopic compositions of evapotranspiration (ET) against in-situ Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) measured bulk water vapor isotopic data (10. m above the ground), however, showed differences in magnitude and temporal patterns. The disparity is due to a small contribution from local ET fluxes to atmospheric boundary layer water vapor (~1% based on calculations using ideal gas law) relative to that advected from the ocean for this particular site. Using ISOLSM simulation, the ET was partitioned into E and T with 70% being T. We also identified that soil water from different soil layers affected T and E differently based on the simulated soil isotopic patterns, which reflects the internal working of ISOLSM. These results highlighted the capacity of using the isotope-enabled models to discriminate

Stable water isotope and surface heat flux simulation using ISOLSM: Evaluation against in-situ measurements

KAUST Repository

Cai, Mick Y.

2015-04-01

The stable isotopes of water are useful tracers of water sources and hydrological processes. Stable water isotope-enabled land surface modeling is a relatively new approach for characterizing the hydrological cycle, providing spatial and temporal variability for a number of hydrological processes. At the land surface, the integration of stable water isotopes with other meteorological measurements can assist in constraining surface heat flux estimates and discriminate between evaporation (E) and transpiration (T). However, research in this area has traditionally been limited by a lack of continuous in-situ isotopic observations. Here, the National Centre for Atmospheric Research stable isotope-enabled Land Surface Model (ISOLSM) is used to simulate the water and energy fluxes and stable water isotope variations. The model was run for a period of one month with meteorological data collected from a coastal sub-tropical site near Sydney, Australia. The modeled energy fluxes (latent heat and sensible heat) agreed reasonably well with eddy covariance observations, indicating that ISOLSM has the capacity to reproduce observed flux behavior. Comparison of modeled isotopic compositions of evapotranspiration (ET) against in-situ Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) measured bulk water vapor isotopic data (10. m above the ground), however, showed differences in magnitude and temporal patterns. The disparity is due to a small contribution from local ET fluxes to atmospheric boundary layer water vapor (~1% based on calculations using ideal gas law) relative to that advected from the ocean for this particular site. Using ISOLSM simulation, the ET was partitioned into E and T with 70% being T. We also identified that soil water from different soil layers affected T and E differently based on the simulated soil isotopic patterns, which reflects the internal working of ISOLSM. These results highlighted the capacity of using the isotope-enabled models to discriminate

A land-use and land-cover modeling strategy to support a national assessment of carbon stocks and fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Sohl, Terry L.; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Zhu, Zhi-Liang; Sayler, Kristi L.; Bennett, Stacie; Bouchard, Michelle; Reker, Ryan R.; Hawbaker, Todd; Wein, Anne; Liu, Shu-Guang; Kanengieter, Ronald; Acevedo, William

2012-01-01

Changes in land use, land cover, disturbance regimes, and land management have considerable influence on carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes within ecosystems. Through targeted land-use and land-management activities, ecosystems can be managed to enhance carbon sequestration and mitigate fluxes of other GHGs. National-scale, comprehensive analyses of carbon sequestration potential by ecosystem are needed, with a consistent, nationally applicable land-use and land-cover (LULC) modeling framework a key component of such analyses. The U.S. Geological Survey has initiated a project to analyze current and projected future GHG fluxes by ecosystem and quantify potential mitigation strategies. We have developed a unique LULC modeling framework to support this work. Downscaled scenarios consistent with IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) were constructed for U.S. ecoregions, and the FORE-SCE model was used to spatially map the scenarios. Results for a prototype demonstrate our ability to model LULC change and inform a biogeochemical modeling framework for analysis of subsequent GHG fluxes. The methodology was then successfully used to model LULC change for four IPCC SRES scenarios for an ecoregion in the Great Plains. The scenario-based LULC projections are now being used to analyze potential GHG impacts of LULC change across the U.S.

Large-scale Validation of AMIP II Land-surface Simulations: Preliminary Results for Ten Models

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Phillips, T J; Henderson-Sellers, A; Irannejad, P; McGuffie, K; Zhang, H

2005-12-01

This report summarizes initial findings of a large-scale validation of the land-surface simulations of ten atmospheric general circulation models that are entries in phase II of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP II). This validation is conducted by AMIP Diagnostic Subproject 12 on Land-surface Processes and Parameterizations, which is focusing on putative relationships between the continental climate simulations and the associated models' land-surface schemes. The selected models typify the diversity of representations of land-surface climate that are currently implemented by the global modeling community. The current dearth of global-scale terrestrial observations makes exacting validation of AMIP II continental simulations impractical. Thus, selected land-surface processes of the models are compared with several alternative validation data sets, which include merged in-situ/satellite products, climate reanalyses, and off-line simulations of land-surface schemes that are driven by observed forcings. The aggregated spatio-temporal differences between each simulated process and a chosen reference data set then are quantified by means of root-mean-square error statistics; the differences among alternative validation data sets are similarly quantified as an estimate of the current observational uncertainty in the selected land-surface process. Examples of these metrics are displayed for land-surface air temperature, precipitation, and the latent and sensible heat fluxes. It is found that the simulations of surface air temperature, when aggregated over all land and seasons, agree most closely with the chosen reference data, while the simulations of precipitation agree least. In the latter case, there also is considerable inter-model scatter in the error statistics, with the reanalyses estimates of precipitation resembling the AMIP II simulations more than to the chosen reference data. In aggregate, the simulations of land-surface latent and

What is the role of historical anthropogenically-induced land-cover change on the surface climate of West Africa? Results from the LUCID intercomparison project

Science.gov (United States)

Souleymane, S.

2015-12-01

West Africa has been highlighted as a hot spot of land surface-atmosphere interactions. This study analyses the outputs of the project Land-Use and Climate, IDentification of Robust Impacts (LUCID) over West Africa. LUCID used seven atmosphere-land models with a common experimental design to explore the impacts of Land Use induced Land Cover Change (LULCC) that are robust and consistent across the climate models. Focusing the analysis on Sahel and Guinea, this study shows that, even though the seven climate models use the same atmospheric and land cover forcing, there are significant differences of West African Monsoon variability across the climate models. The magnitude of that variability differs significantly from model to model resulting two major "features": (1) atmosphere dynamics models; (2) how the land-surface functioning is parameterized in the Land surface Model, in particular regarding the evapotranspiration partitioning within the different land-cover types, as well as the role of leaf area index (LAI) in the flux calculations and how strongly the surface is coupled to the atmosphere. The major role that the models'sensitivity to land-cover perturbations plays in the resulting climate impacts of LULCC has been analysed in this study. The climate models show, however, significant differences in the magnitude and the seasonal partitioning of the temperature change. The LULCC induced cooling is directed by decreases in net shortwave radiation that reduced the available energy (QA) (related to changes in land-cover properties other than albedo, such as LAI and surface roughness), which decreases during most part of the year. The biophysical impacts of LULCC were compared to the impact of elevated greenhouse gases resulting changes in sea surface temperatures and sea ice extent (CO2SST). The results show that the surface cooling (related a decrease in QA) induced by the biophysical effects of LULCC are insignificant compared to surface warming (related an

Contrasting self-aggregation over land and ocean surfaces

Science.gov (United States)

Inda Diaz, H. A.; O'Brien, T. A.

2017-12-01

The spontaneous organization of convection into clusters, or self-aggregation, demonstrably changes the nature and statistics of precipitation. While there has been much recent progress in this area, the processes that control self-aggregation are still poorly understood. Most of the work to date has focused on self-aggregation over ocean-like surfaces, but it is particularly pressing to understand what controls convective aggregation over land, since the associated change in precipitation statistics—between non-aggregated and aggregated convection—could have huge impacts on society and infrastructure. Radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE), has been extensively used as an idealized framework to study the tropical atmosphere. Self-aggregation manifests in numerous numerical models of RCE, nevertheless, there is still a lack of understanding in how it relates to convective organization in the observed world. Numerous studies have examined self-aggregation using idealized Cloud Resolving Models (CRMs) and General Circulation Models over the ocean, however very little work has been done on RCE and self-aggregation over land. Idealized models of RCE over ocean have shown that aggregation is sensitive to sea surface temperature (SST), more intense precipitation occurs in aggregated systems, and a variety of feedbacks—such as surface flux, cloud radiative, and upgradient moisture transport— contribute to the maintenance of aggregation, however it is not clear if these results apply over land. Progress in this area could help relate understanding of self-aggregation in idealized simulations to observations. In order to explore the behavior of self-aggregation over land, we use a CRM to simulate idealized RCE over land. In particular, we examine the aggregation of convection and how it compares with aggregation over ocean. Based on previous studies, where a variety of different CRMs exhibit a SST threshold below which self-aggregation does not occur, we hypothesize

The influence of idealized surface heterogeneity on virtual turbulent flux measurements

Science.gov (United States)

De Roo, Frederik; Mauder, Matthias

2018-04-01

The imbalance of the surface energy budget in eddy-covariance measurements is still an unsolved problem. A possible cause is the presence of land surface heterogeneity, which affects the boundary-layer turbulence. To investigate the impact of surface variables on the partitioning of the energy budget of flux measurements in the surface layer under convective conditions, we set up a systematic parameter study by means of large-eddy simulation. For the study we use a virtual control volume approach, which allows the determination of advection by the mean flow, flux-divergence and storage terms of the energy budget at the virtual measurement site, in addition to the standard turbulent flux. We focus on the heterogeneity of the surface fluxes and keep the topography flat. The surface fluxes vary locally in intensity and these patches have different length scales. Intensity and length scales can vary for the two horizontal dimensions but follow an idealized chessboard pattern. Our main focus lies on surface heterogeneity of the kilometer scale, and one order of magnitude smaller. For these two length scales, we investigate the average response of the fluxes at a number of virtual towers, when varying the heterogeneity length within the length scale and when varying the contrast between the different patches. For each simulation, virtual measurement towers were positioned at functionally different positions (e.g., downdraft region, updraft region, at border between domains, etc.). As the storage term is always small, the non-closure is given by the sum of the advection by the mean flow and the flux-divergence. Remarkably, the missing flux can be described by either the advection by the mean flow or the flux-divergence separately, because the latter two have a high correlation with each other. For kilometer scale heterogeneity, we notice a clear dependence of the updrafts and downdrafts on the surface heterogeneity and likewise we also see a dependence of the energy

Modelling land surface fluxes of CO2 in response to climate change and nitrogen deposition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Kristina; Ambelas Skjøth, Carsten; Geels, Camilla

Climate change, land use variations, and impacts of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition represent uncertainties for the prediction of future greenhouse gas exchange between land surfaces and the atmosphere as the mechanisms describing nutritional effects are not well developed in climate...... climate feedback mechanisms of CO2 between changes in management, land use practise, and climate change....

Quantifying Water and Energy Fluxes Over Different Urban Land Covers in Phoenix, Arizona

Science.gov (United States)

Templeton, Nicole P.; Vivoni, Enrique R.; Wang, Zhi-Hua; Schreiner-McGraw, Adam P.

2018-02-01

The impact of urbanization on water and energy fluxes varies according to the characteristics of the urban patch type. Nevertheless, urban flux observations are limited, particularly in arid climates, given the wide variety of land cover present in cities. To help address this need, a mobile eddy covariance tower was deployed at three locations in Phoenix, Arizona, to sample the surface energy balance at a parking lot, a xeric landscaping (irrigated trees with gravel) and a mesic landscaping (irrigated turf grass). These deployments were compared to a stationary eddy covariance tower in a suburban neighborhood. A comparison of the observations revealed key differences between the mobile and reference sites tied to the urban land cover within the measurement footprints. For instance, the net radiation varied substantially among the sites in manners consistent with albedo and shallow soil temperature differences. The partitioning of available energy between sensible and latent heat fluxes was modulated strongly by the presence of outdoor water use, with the irrigated turf grass exhibiting the highest evaporative fraction. At this site, we identified a lack of sensitivity of turbulent flux partitioning to precipitation events, which suggests that frequent outdoor water use removes water limitations in an arid climate, thus leading to mesic conditions. Other urban land covers with less irrigation, however, exhibited sensitivity to the occurrence of precipitation, as expected for an arid climate. As a result, quantifying the frequency and magnitude of outdoor water use is critical for understanding evapotranspiration losses in arid urban areas.

Application of Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) accelerators to the Pleim-Xiu land surface scheme

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Melin; Huang, Bormin; Huang, Allen H.

2015-10-01

The land-surface model (LSM) is one physics process in the weather research and forecast (WRF) model. The LSM includes atmospheric information from the surface layer scheme, radiative forcing from the radiation scheme, and precipitation forcing from the microphysics and convective schemes, together with internal information on the land's state variables and land-surface properties. The LSM is to provide heat and moisture fluxes over land points and sea-ice points. The Pleim-Xiu (PX) scheme is one LSM. The PX LSM features three pathways for moisture fluxes: evapotranspiration, soil evaporation, and evaporation from wet canopies. To accelerate the computation process of this scheme, we employ Intel Xeon Phi Many Integrated Core (MIC) Architecture as it is a multiprocessor computer structure with merits of efficient parallelization and vectorization essentials. Our results show that the MIC-based optimization of this scheme running on Xeon Phi coprocessor 7120P improves the performance by 2.3x and 11.7x as compared to the original code respectively running on one CPU socket (eight cores) and on one CPU core with Intel Xeon E5-2670.

Extreme Maximum Land Surface Temperatures.

Science.gov (United States)

Garratt, J. R.

1992-09-01

There are numerous reports in the literature of observations of land surface temperatures. Some of these, almost all made in situ, reveal maximum values in the 50°-70°C range, with a few, made in desert regions, near 80°C. Consideration of a simplified form of the surface energy balance equation, utilizing likely upper values of absorbed shortwave flux (1000 W m2) and screen air temperature (55°C), that surface temperatures in the vicinity of 90°-100°C may occur for dry, darkish soils of low thermal conductivity (0.1-0.2 W m1 K1). Numerical simulations confirm this and suggest that temperature gradients in the first few centimeters of soil may reach 0.5°-1°C mm1 under these extreme conditions. The study bears upon the intrinsic interest of identifying extreme maximum temperatures and yields interesting information regarding the comfort zone of animals (including man).

WRF Simulation over the Eastern Africa by use of Land Surface Initialization

Science.gov (United States)

Sakwa, V. N.; Case, J.; Limaye, A. S.; Zavodsky, B.; Kabuchanga, E. S.; Mungai, J.

2014-12-01

The East Africa region experiences severe weather events associated with hazards of varying magnitude. It receives heavy precipitation which leads to wide spread flooding and lack of sufficient rainfall in some parts results into drought. Cases of flooding and drought are two key forecasting challenges for the Kenya Meteorological Service (KMS). The source of heat and moisture depends on the state of the land surface which interacts with the boundary layer of the atmosphere to produce excessive precipitation or lack of it that leads to severe drought. The development and evolution of precipitation systems are affected by heat and moisture fluxes from the land surface within weakly-sheared environments, such as in the tropics and sub-tropics. These heat and moisture fluxes during the day can be strongly influenced by land cover, vegetation, and soil moisture content. Therefore, it is important to represent the land surface state as accurately as possible in numerical weather prediction models. Improved modeling capabilities within the region have the potential to enhance forecast guidance in support of daily operations and high-impact weather over East Africa. KMS currently runs a configuration of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in real time to support its daily forecasting operations, invoking the Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM) dynamical core. They make use of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration / National Weather Service Science and Training Resource Center's Environmental Modeling System (EMS) to manage and produce the WRF-NMM model runs on a 7-km regional grid over Eastern Africa.SPoRT and SERVIR provide land surface initialization datasets and model verification tool. The NASA Land Information System (LIS) provide real-time, daily soil initialization data in place of interpolated Global Forecast System soil moisture and temperature data. Model verification is done using the Model Evaluation Tools (MET) package, in order

Flux pinning and flux flow studies in superconductors using flux flow noise techniques. Progress report, April 1, 1976--December 17, 1976

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Joiner, W.C.H.

1976-12-01

Measurements of flux flow noise power spectra have been combined with critical current measurements and measurements of current-voltage characteristics to study flux flow and local pinning interactions effective during flux flow. A model of flux flow noise generation in the presence of local pinning interactions is developed and applied to situations where pinning is dominated by: (1) grain boundaries, (2) normal metal precipitates in a superconducting matrix, (3) gross deformation producing a critical current peak effect, and (4) surface grooves imposed on a sample surface. In the case of pinning caused by normal metal precipitates in a superconducting matrix, unusual training and hysterisis effects are observed in the flux flow characteristics. The greater sensitivity of noise spectra, as compared with bulk critical current measurements, in obtaining a detailed picture of flux flow is emphasized

Uncertainty analysis of the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model at multiple flux tower sites

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Mingshi; Senay, Gabriel B.; Singh, Ramesh K.; Verdin, James P.

2016-01-01

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component of the water cycle – ET from the land surface returns approximately 60% of the global precipitation back to the atmosphere. ET also plays an important role in energy transport among the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere. Current regional to global and daily to annual ET estimation relies mainly on surface energy balance (SEB) ET models or statistical and empirical methods driven by remote sensing data and various climatological databases. These models have uncertainties due to inevitable input errors, poorly defined parameters, and inadequate model structures. The eddy covariance measurements on water, energy, and carbon fluxes at the AmeriFlux tower sites provide an opportunity to assess the ET modeling uncertainties. In this study, we focused on uncertainty analysis of the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model for ET estimation at multiple AmeriFlux tower sites with diverse land cover characteristics and climatic conditions. The 8-day composite 1-km MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) was used as input land surface temperature for the SSEBop algorithms. The other input data were taken from the AmeriFlux database. Results of statistical analysis indicated that the SSEBop model performed well in estimating ET with an R2 of 0.86 between estimated ET and eddy covariance measurements at 42 AmeriFlux tower sites during 2001–2007. It was encouraging to see that the best performance was observed for croplands, where R2 was 0.92 with a root mean square error of 13 mm/month. The uncertainties or random errors from input variables and parameters of the SSEBop model led to monthly ET estimates with relative errors less than 20% across multiple flux tower sites distributed across different biomes. This uncertainty of the SSEBop model lies within the error range of other SEB models, suggesting systematic error or bias of the SSEBop model is within

Land Surface Data Assimilation

Science.gov (United States)

Houser, P. R.

2012-12-01

Information about land surface water, energy and carbon conditions is of critical importance to real-world applications such as agricultural production, water resource management, flood prediction, water supply, weather and climate forecasting, and environmental preservation. While ground-based observational networks are improving, the only practical way to observe these land surface states on continental to global scales is via satellites. Remote sensing can make spatially comprehensive measurements of various components of the terrestrial system, but it cannot provide information on the entire system (e.g. evaporation), and the observations represent only an instant in time. Land surface process models may be used to predict temporal and spatial terrestrial dynamics, but these predictions are often poor, due to model initialization, parameter and forcing, and physics errors. Therefore, an attractive prospect is to combine the strengths of land surface models and observations (and minimize the weaknesses) to provide a superior terrestrial state estimate. This is the goal of land surface data assimilation. Data Assimilation combines observations into a dynamical model, using the model's equations to provide time continuity and coupling between the estimated fields. Land surface data assimilation aims to utilize both our land surface process knowledge, as embodied in a land surface model, and information that can be gained from observations. Both model predictions and observations are imperfect and we wish to use both synergistically to obtain a more accurate result. Moreover, both contain different kinds of information, that when used together, provide an accuracy level that cannot be obtained individually. Model biases can be mitigated using a complementary calibration and parameterization process. Limited point measurements are often used to calibrate the model(s) and validate the assimilation results. This presentation will provide a brief background on land

Land Use, Land Use History, and Soil Type Affect Soil Greenhouse Gas Fluxes From Agricultural Landscapes of the East African Highlands

Science.gov (United States)

Wanyama, I.; Rufino, M. C.; Pelster, D. E.; Wanyama, G.; Atzberger, C.; van Asten, P.; Verchot, Louis V.; Butterbach-Bahl, K.

2018-03-01

This study aims to explain effects of soil textural class, topography, land use, and land use history on soil greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in the Lake Victoria region. We measured GHG fluxes from intact soil cores collected in Rakai, Uganda, an area characterized by low-input smallholder (soil cores were air dried and rewetted to water holding capacities (WHCs) of 30, 55, and 80%. Soil CO2, CH4, and N2O fluxes were measured for 48 h following rewetting. Cumulative N2O fluxes were highest from soils under perennial crops and the lowest from soils under annual crops (P soils had lower N2O fluxes than the clay soils (P soil CO2 fluxes were highest from eucalyptus plantations and lowest from annual crops across multiple WHC (P = 0.014 at 30% WHC and P soil cores from the top soil. This study reveals that land use and soil type have strong effects on GHG fluxes from agricultural land in the study area. Field monitoring of fluxes is needed to confirm whether these findings are consistent with what happens in situ.

Impacts of Irrigation on the Heat Fluxes and Near-Surface Temperature in an Inland Irrigation Area of Northern China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Li Jiang

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Irrigated agriculture has the potential to alter regional to global climate significantly. We investigate how irrigation will affect regional climate in the future in an inland irrigation area of northern China, focusing on its effects on heat fluxes and near-surface temperature. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF model, we compare simulations among three land cover scenarios: the control scenario (CON, the irrigation scenario (IRR, and the irrigated cropland expansion scenario (ICE. Our results show that the surface energy budgets and temperature are sensitive to changes in the extent and spatial pattern of irrigated land. Conversion to irrigated agriculture at the contemporary scale leads to an increase in annual mean latent heat fluxes of 12.10 W m−2, a decrease in annual mean sensible heat fluxes of 8.85 W m−2, and a decrease in annual mean temperature of 1.3 °C across the study region. Further expansion of irrigated land increases annual mean latent heat fluxes by 18.08 W m−2, decreases annual mean sensible heat fluxes by 12.31 W m−2, and decreases annual mean temperature by 1.7 °C. Our simulated effects of irrigation show that changes in land use management such as irrigation can be an important component of climate change and need to be considered together with greenhouse forcing in climate change assessments.

Land-Use Change, Soil Process and Trace Gas Fluxes in the Brazilian Amazon Basin

Science.gov (United States)

Melillo, Jerry M.; Steudler, Paul A.

1997-01-01

We measured changes in key soil processes and the fluxes of CO2, CH4 and N2O associated with the conversion of tropical rainforest to pasture in Rondonia, a state in the southwest Amazon that has experienced rapid deforestation, primarily for cattle ranching, since the late 1970s. These measurements provide a comprehensive quantitative picture of the nature of surface soil element stocks, C and nutrient dynamics, and trace gas fluxes between soils and the atmosphere during the entire sequence of land-use change from the initial cutting and burning of native forest, through planting and establishment of pasture grass and ending with very old continuously-pastured land. All of our work is done in cooperation with Brazilian scientists at the Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA) through an extant official bi-lateral agreement between the Marine Biological Laboratory and the University of Sao Paulo, CENA's parent institution.

Cabauw Experimental Results from the Project for Intercomparison of Land-Surface Parameterization Schemes.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, T. H.; Henderson-Sellers, A.; Milly, P. C. D.; Pitman, A. J.; Beljaars, A. C. M.; Polcher, J.; Abramopoulos, F.; Boone, A.; Chang, S.; Chen, F.; Dai, Y.; Desborough, C. E.; Dickinson, R. E.; Dümenil, L.; Ek, M.; Garratt, J. R.; Gedney, N.; Gusev, Y. M.;  Kim, J.;  Koster, R.;  Kowalczyk, E. A.;  Laval, K.;  Lean, J.;  Lettenmaier, D.;  Liang, X.;  Mahfouf, J.-F.;  Mengelkamp, H.-T.;  Mitchell, K.;  Nasonova, O. N.;  Noilhan, J.;  Robock, A.;  Rosenzweig, C.;  Schaake, J.;  Schlosser, C. A.;  Schulz, J.-P.;  Shao, Y.;  Shmakin, A. B.;  Verseghy, D. L.;  Wetzel, P.;  Wood, E. F.;  Xue, Y.;  Yang, Z.-L.;  Zeng, Q.

1997-06-01

In the Project for Intercomparison of Land-Surface Parameterization Schemes phase 2a experiment, meteorological data for the year 1987 from Cabauw, the Netherlands, were used as inputs to 23 land-surface flux schemes designed for use in climate and weather models. Schemes were evaluated by comparing their outputs with long-term measurements of surface sensible heat fluxes into the atmosphere and the ground, and of upward longwave radiation and total net radiative fluxes, and also comparing them with latent heat fluxes derived from a surface energy balance. Tuning of schemes by use of the observed flux data was not permitted. On an annual basis, the predicted surface radiative temperature exhibits a range of 2 K across schemes, consistent with the range of about 10 W m2 in predicted surface net radiation. Most modeled values of monthly net radiation differ from the observations by less than the estimated maximum monthly observational error (±10 W m2). However, modeled radiative surface temperature appears to have a systematic positive bias in most schemes; this might be explained by an error in assumed emissivity and by models' neglect of canopy thermal heterogeneity. Annual means of sensible and latent heat fluxes, into which net radiation is partitioned, have ranges across schemes of30 W m2 and 25 W m2, respectively. Annual totals of evapotranspiration and runoff, into which the precipitation is partitioned, both have ranges of 315 mm. These ranges in annual heat and water fluxes were approximately halved upon exclusion of the three schemes that have no stomatal resistance under non-water-stressed conditions. Many schemes tend to underestimate latent heat flux and overestimate sensible heat flux in summer, with a reverse tendency in winter. For six schemes, root-mean-square deviations of predictions from monthly observations are less than the estimated upper bounds on observation errors (5 W m2 for sensible heat flux and 10 W m2 for latent heat flux). Actual

Surface energy budget and turbulent fluxes at Arctic terrestrial sites

Science.gov (United States)

Grachev, Andrey; Persson, Ola; Uttal, Taneil; Konopleva-Akish, Elena; Crepinsek, Sara; Cox, Christopher; Fairall, Christopher; Makshtas, Alexander; Repina, Irina

2017-04-01

Determination of the surface energy budget (SEB) and all SEB components at the air-surface interface are required in a wide variety of applications including atmosphere-land/snow simulations and validation of the surface fluxes predicted by numerical models over different spatial and temporal scales. Here, comparisons of net surface energy budgets at two Arctic sites are made using long-term near-continuous measurements of hourly averaged surface fluxes (turbulent, radiation, and soil conduction). One site, Eureka (80.0 N; Nunavut, Canada), is located in complex topography near a fjord about 200 km from the Arctic Ocean. The other site, Tiksi (71.6 N; Russian East Siberia), is located on a relatively flat coastal plain less than 1 km from the shore of Tiksi Bay, a branch of the Arctic Ocean. We first analyzed diurnal and annual cycles of basic meteorological parameters and key SEB components at these locations. Although Eureka and Tiksi are located on different continents and at different latitudes, the annual course of the surface meteorology and SEB components are qualitatively similar. Surface energy balance closure is a formulation of the conservation of energy principle. Our direct measurements of energy balance for both Arctic sites show that the sum of the turbulent sensible and latent heat fluxes and the ground (conductive) heat flux systematically underestimate the net radiation by about 25-30%. This lack of energy balance closure is a fundamental and pervasive problem in micrometeorology. We discuss a variety of factors which may be responsible for the lack of SEB closure. In particular, various storage terms (e.g., air column energy storage due to radiative and/or sensible heat flux divergence, ground heat storage above the soil flux plate, energy used in photosynthesis, canopy biomass heat storage). For example, our observations show that the photosynthesis storage term is relatively small (about 1-2% of the net radiation), but about 8-12% of the

Inter-annual variabilities in biogeophysical feedback of terrestrial ecosystem to atmosphere using a land surface model

Science.gov (United States)

Seo, C.; Hong, S.; Jeong, H. M.; Jeon, J.

2017-12-01

Biogeophysical processes of terrestrial ecosystem such as water vapor and energy flux are the key features to understand ecological feedback to atmospheric processes and thus role of terrestrial ecosystem in climate system. For example, it has been recently known that the ecological feedback through water vapor and energy flux results in regulating regional weathers and climates which is one of the fundamental functions of terrestrial ecosystem. In regional scale, water vapor flux has been known to give negative feedback to atmospheric warming, while energy flux from the surface has been known to positive feedback. In this study, we explored the inter-annual variabilities in these two biogeophysical features to see how the climate regulating functions of terrestrial ecosystem have been changed with climate change. We selected a land surface model involving vegetation dynamics that is forced by atmospheric data from NASA including precipitation, temperature, wind, surface pressure, humidity, and incoming radiations. From the land surface model, we simulated 60-year water vapor and energy fluxes from 1961 to 2010, and calculates feedbacks of terrestrial ecosystem as in radiation amount into atmosphere. Then, we analyzed the inter-annual variabilities in the feedbacks. The results showed that some mid-latitude areas showing very high variabilities in precipitation showed higher positive feedback and/or lower negative feedback. These results suggest deterioration of the biogeophyisical factor of climate regulating function over those regions.

Northern Alaskan land surface response to reduced Arctic sea ice extent

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Higgins, Matthew E. [University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO (United States); Cassano, John J. [University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Boulder, CO (United States)

2012-05-15

With Arctic sea ice extent at near-record lows, an improved understanding of the relationship between sea ice and the land surface is warranted. We examine the land surface response to changing sea ice by first conducting a simulation using the Community Atmospheric Model version 3.1 with end of the twenty-first century sea ice extent. This future atmospheric response is then used to force the Weather and Research Forecasting Model version 3.1 to examine the terrestrial land surface response at high resolution over the North Slope of Alaska. Similar control simulations with twentieth century sea ice projections are also performed, and in both simulations only sea ice extent is altered. In the future sea ice extent experiment, atmospheric temperature increases significantly due to increases in latent and sensible heat flux, particularly in the winter season. Precipitation and snow pack increase significantly, and the increased snow pack contributes to warmer soil temperatures for most seasons by insulating the land surface. In the summer, however, soil temperatures are reduced due to increased albedo. Despite warmer near-surface atmospheric temperatures, it is found that spring melt is delayed throughout much of the North Slope due to the increased snow pack, and the growing season length is shortened. (orig.)

A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model of turbulent transfer of CO2 and H2O over a heterogeneous land surface

Science.gov (United States)

Mukhartova, Yu. V.; Krupenko, A. S.; Mangura, P. A.; Levashova, N. T.

2018-01-01

A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model was developed and applied to describe turbulent fluxes of CO2 and H2O within the atmospheric surface layer over a heterogeneous land surface featuring mosaic vegetation and complex topography. Numerical experiments were carried out with a 4.5-km profile that crosses a hilly region in the central part of European Russia, with the diverse land-use patterns (bare soil, crop areas, grasslands, and forests). The results showed very strong variability of the vertical and horizontal turbulent CO2 and H2O fluxes. The standard deviations of the vertical fluxes were estimated for separate profile sections with uniform vegetation cover for daylight conditions in summer, and they were comparable with the mean vertical fluxes for corresponding sections. The highest horizontal turbulent fluxes occurred at the boundaries between different plant communities and at irregularities in surface profile. In some cases, these fluxes reached 10-20% of the absolute values of the mean vertical fluxes for corresponding profile sections. Significant errors in estimating the local and integrated fluxes e.g. when using the eddy covariance technique, can result from ignoring the surface topography, even in the case of relatively large plots with uniform vegetation cover.

A Remote Sensing-based Characterization of the Urban Heat Island and its Implications for Modeled Estimates of Urban Biogenic Carbon Fluxes in Boston, MA.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, J.; Friedl, M. A.; Hutyra, L.; Hardiman, B. S.

2015-12-01

Urban land use occupies a small but critical proportion of global land area for the carbon cycle, and in the coming decades, urban land area is expected to nearly double. Conversion of natural land cover to urban land cover imposes myriad ecological effects, including increased land surface and air temperatures via the urban heat island effect. In this study, we characterize the seasonal and spatial characteristics of the urban heat island over Boston, MA and estimate its consequences on biogenic carbon fluxes with a remote sensing-based model. Using a 12-year time series of emissivity- and atmospherically-corrected land surface temperatures from Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery, we find a high degree of spatial heterogeneity and consistent seasonal patterns in the thermal properties of Boston, controlled mainly by variations in vegetative cover. Field measurements of surface air temperature across an urbanization gradient show season- and vegetation-dependent patterns consistent with those observed in the Landsat data. With a fused data set that combines surface air temperature, MODIS, and Landsat observations, we modify and run the Vegetation Photosynthesis and Respiration Model (VPRM) to explore 1) how elevated temperatures affect diurnal and seasonal patterns of hourly urban biogenic carbon fluxes in Massachusetts in 2013 and 2014 and 2) to what extent these fluxes follow spatial patterns found in the urban heat island. Model modifications simulate the ecological effects of urbanization, including empirical adjustments to reanalysis-driven air temperatures (up to 5 K) and ecosystem respiration reduced by impervious surface area. Model results reveal spatio-temporal patterns consistent with strong land use and vegetation cover controls on biogenic carbon fluxes, with non-trivial biogenic annual net ecosystem exchange occurring in urban and suburban areas (up to -2.5 MgC/ha/yr). We specifically consider the feedbacks between Boston's urban heat island and landscape

Regional CO2 and latent heat surface fluxes in the Southern Great Plains: Measurements, modeling, and scaling

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Riley, W. J.; Biraud, S.C.; Torn, M.S.; Fischer, M.L.; Billesbach, D.P.; Berry, J.A.

2009-08-15

Characterizing net ecosystem exchanges (NEE) of CO{sub 2} and sensible and latent heat fluxes in heterogeneous landscapes is difficult, yet critical given expected changes in climate and land use. We report here a measurement and modeling study designed to improve our understanding of surface to atmosphere gas exchanges under very heterogeneous land cover in the mostly agricultural U.S. Southern Great Plains (SGP). We combined three years of site-level, eddy covariance measurements in several of the dominant land cover types with regional-scale climate data from the distributed Mesonet stations and Next Generation Weather Radar precipitation measurements to calibrate a land surface model of trace gas and energy exchanges (isotope-enabled land surface model (ISOLSM)). Yearly variations in vegetation cover distributions were estimated from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer normalized difference vegetation index and compared to regional and subregional vegetation cover type estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture census. We first applied ISOLSM at a 250 m spatial scale to account for vegetation cover type and leaf area variations that occur on hundred meter scales. Because of computational constraints, we developed a subsampling scheme within 10 km 'macrocells' to perform these high-resolution simulations. We estimate that the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility SGP region net CO{sub 2} exchange with the local atmosphere was -240, -340, and -270 gC m{sup -2} yr{sup -1} (positive toward the atmosphere) in 2003, 2004, and 2005, respectively, with large seasonal variations. We also performed simulations using two scaling approaches at resolutions of 10, 30, 60, and 90 km. The scaling approach applied in current land surface models led to regional NEE biases of up to 50 and 20% in weekly and annual estimates, respectively. An important factor in causing these biases was the complex leaf area index (LAI) distribution

Using a thermal-based two source energy balance model with time-differencing to estimate surface energy fluxes with day-night MODIS observations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Guzinski, Radoslaw; Anderson, M.C.; Kustas, W.P.

2013-01-01

The Dual Temperature Difference (DTD) model, introduced by Norman et al. (2000), uses a two source energy balance modelling scheme driven by remotely sensed observations of diurnal changes in land surface temperature (LST) to estimate surface energy fluxes. By using a time-differential temperature...... agreement with field measurements is obtained for a number of ecosystems in Denmark and the United States. Finally, regional maps of energy fluxes are produced for the Danish Hydrological ObsErvatory (HOBE) in western Denmark, indicating realistic patterns based on land use....

A novel assessment of the role of land-use and land-cover change in the global carbon cycle, using a new Dynamic Global Vegetation Model version of the CABLE land surface model

Science.gov (United States)

Haverd, Vanessa; Smith, Benjamin; Nieradzik, Lars; Briggs, Peter; Canadell, Josep

2017-04-01

In recent decades, terrestrial ecosystems have sequestered around 1.2 PgC y-1, an amount equivalent to 20% of fossil-fuel emissions. This land carbon flux is the net result of the impact of changing climate and CO2 on ecosystem productivity (CO2-climate driven land sink ) and deforestation, harvest and secondary forest regrowth (the land-use change (LUC) flux). The future trajectory of the land carbon flux is highly dependent upon the contributions of these processes to the net flux. However their contributions are highly uncertain, in part because the CO2-climate driven land sink and LUC components are often estimated independently, when in fact they are coupled. We provide a novel assessment of global land carbon fluxes (1800-2015) that integrates land-use effects with the effects of changing climate and CO2 on ecosystem productivity. For this, we use a new land-use enabled Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) version of the CABLE land surface model, suitable for use in attributing changes in terrestrial carbon balance, and in predicting changes in vegetation cover and associated effects on land-atmosphere exchange. In this model, land-use-change is driven by prescribed gross land-use transitions and harvest areas, which are converted to changes in land-use area and transfer of carbon between pools (soil, litter, biomass, harvested wood products and cleared wood pools). A novel aspect is the treatment of secondary woody vegetation via the coupling between the land-use module and the POP (Populations Order Physiology) module for woody demography and disturbance-mediated landscape heterogeneity. Land-use transitions to and from secondary forest tiles modify the patch age distribution within secondary-vegetated tiles, in turn affecting biomass accumulation and turnover rates and hence the magnitude of the secondary forest sink. The resulting secondary forest patch age distribution also influences the magnitude of the secondary forest harvest and clearance fluxes

A new design of the LAPS land surface scheme for use over and through heterogeneous and non-heterogeneous surfaces: Numerical simulations and tests

Science.gov (United States)

Mihailovic, Dragutin T.; Lazic, Jelena; Leśny, Jacek; Olejnik, Janusz; Lalic, Branislava; Kapor, Darko; Cirisan, Ana

2010-05-01

Numerical simulations and tests with the recently redesigned land-air parameterization scheme (LAPS) are presented. In all experiments, supported either by one-point micrometeorological, 1D or 3D simulations, the attention has been directed to: (1) comparison of simulation outputs, expressing the energy transfer over and through heterogeneous and non-heterogeneous surfaces, versus observations and (2) analysis of uncertainties occurring in the solution of the energy balance equation at the land-air interface. To check the proposed method for aggregation of albedo, "propagating hole" sensitivity tests with LAPS over a sandstone rock grid cell have been performed with the forcing meteorological data for July 17, 1999 in Baxter site, Philadelphia (USA). Micrometeorological and biophysical measurements from the surface experiments conducted over crops and apple orchard in Serbia, Poland, Austria and France were used to test the operation of LAPS in calculating surface fluxes and canopy environment temperatures within and above plant covers of different densities. In addition, sensitivity tests with single canopy covers over the Central Europe region and comparison against the observations taken from SYNOP data using 3D simulations were made. Validation of LAPS performances over a solid surface has been done by comparison of 2 m air temperature observations against 5-day simulations over the Sahara Desert rocky ground using 3D model. To examine how realistically the LAPS simulates surface processes over a heterogeneous surface, we compared the air temperature measured at 2 m and that predicted by the 1D model with the LAPS as the surface scheme. Finally, the scheme behaviour over urban surface was tested by runs over different parts of a hypothetical urban area. The corresponding 1D simulations were carried out with an imposed meteorological dataset collected during HAPEX-MOBILHY experiment at Caumont (France). The quantities predicted by the LAPS compare well with the

Surface latent heat flux as an earthquake precursor

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Dey

2003-01-01

Full Text Available The analysis of surface latent heat flux (SLHF from the epicentral regions of five recent earthquakes that occurred in close proximity to the oceans has been found to show anomalous behavior. The maximum increase of SLHF is found 2–7 days prior to the main earthquake event. This increase is likely due to an ocean-land-atmosphere interaction. The increase of SLHF prior to the main earthquake event is attributed to the increase in infrared thermal (IR temperature in the epicentral and surrounding region. The anomalous increase in SLHF shows great potential in providing early warning of a disastrous earthquake, provided that there is a better understanding of the background noise due to the tides and monsoon in surface latent heat flux. Efforts have been made to understand the level of background noise in the epicentral regions of the five earthquakes considered in the present paper. A comparison of SLHF from the epicentral regions over the coastal earthquakes and the earthquakes that occurred far away from the coast has been made and it has been found that the anomalous behavior of SLHF prior to the main earthquake event is only associated with the coastal earthquakes.

Impact of Soil Moisture Assimilation on Land Surface Model Spin-Up and Coupled LandAtmosphere Prediction

Science.gov (United States)

Santanello, Joseph A., Jr.; Kumar, Sujay V.; Peters-Lidard, Christa D.; Lawston, P.

2016-01-01

Advances in satellite monitoring of the terrestrial water cycle have led to a concerted effort to assimilate soil moisture observations from various platforms into offline land surface models (LSMs). One principal but still open question is that of the ability of land data assimilation (LDA) to improve LSM initial conditions for coupled short-term weather prediction. In this study, the impact of assimilating Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) soil moisture retrievals on coupled WRF Model forecasts is examined during the summers of dry (2006) and wet (2007) surface conditions in the southern Great Plains. LDA is carried out using NASAs Land Information System (LIS) and the Noah LSM through an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) approach. The impacts of LDA on the 1) soil moisture and soil temperature initial conditions for WRF, 2) land-atmosphere coupling characteristics, and 3) ambient weather of the coupled LIS-WRF simulations are then assessed. Results show that impacts of soil moisture LDA during the spin-up can significantly modify LSM states and fluxes, depending on regime and season. Results also indicate that the use of seasonal cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) is more advantageous compared to the traditional annual CDF bias correction strategies. LDA performs consistently regardless of atmospheric forcing applied, with greater improvements seen when using coarser, global forcing products. Downstream impacts on coupled simulations vary according to the strength of the LDA impact at the initialization, where significant modifications to the soil moisture flux- PBL-ambient weather process chain are observed. Overall, this study demonstrates potential for future, higher-resolution soil moisture assimilation applications in weather and climate research.

Variations of Near Surface Energy Balance Caused by Land Cover Changes in the Semiarid Grassland Area of China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qun’ou Jiang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This study applies the Dynamics of Land System (DLS model to simulating the land cover under the designed scenarios and then analyzes the effects of land cover conversion on energy flux in the semiarid grassland area of China with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF model. The results indicate that the grassland will show a steadily upgrowing trend under the coordinated environmental sustainability (CES scenario. Compared to the CES scenario, the rate of increase in grassland cover is lower, while the rate of increase in urban land cover will be higher under the rapid economic growth (REG scenario. Although the conversion from cropland to grassland will reduce the energy flux, the expansion of urban area and decreasing of forestry area will bring about more energy flux. As a whole, the energy flux of near surface will obviously not change under the CES scenario, and the climate therefore will not be possible to be influenced greatly by land cover change. The energy flux under the REG scenario is higher than that under the CES scenario. Those research conclusions can offer valuable information for the land use planning and climate change adaptation in the semiarid grassland area of China.

METHODOLOGICAL BASIS IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS IN LAND USE, BURDENED LAND RIGHTS DURING LAND TENURE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dorosh J.

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The question of balanced consolidation of social legislation in a reasonable ratio of land rights and the interests of society as a whole, as well as local communities, citizens and legal entities established by them are general in nature and require specificity it is. Proved that one way of solving this problem is the establishment of restoictions of land rights, restrictions in land use. However, the mechanism of regulation establishment, implementation and termination of restrictions on the rights to land are not very functional and needs improvement. Current legislation in Ukraine does not contain a balanced set of regulations that would determine the nature and objectives of the restrictions, including encumbrances of land rights, their types, the reasons establishing and implementing restrictions of ownership and other rights to land and so on. Based on our analysis, we provide scientifically grounded suggestions on improving the legal framework, particularly, in terms of restrictions on land use and registration in the land management process, as an important means of influence on those rights in order to ensure rational land use and protection it is. Proved that the efficiency of administrative decisions during setting restrictions on land use purpose and usage of land is possible on the basis of land zoning, thus, it is necessary to adopt the Law of Ukraine "On land zoning." In addition, the current classification of land use restrictions, which was proposed by prominent scientists in Ukraine AM Tretyak (classification of restrictions in land use by functional features, and D.S. Dobryak and D.I. Babmindra (classification of restrictions on land use based on their placement by owners and land users, is complemented by types, namely: legal, environmental, ecological, technological, sanitation, urban and special. In the result of scientific studies,we have proposed a model of methodological process of land management actions on formation

A Parameterization for Land-Atmosphere-Cloud Exchange (PLACE): Documentation and Testing of a Detailed Process Model of the Partly Cloudy Boundary Layer over Heterogeneous Land.

Science.gov (United States)

Wetzel, Peter J.; Boone, Aaron

1995-07-01

This paper presents a general description of, and demonstrates the capabilities of, the Parameterization for Land-Atmosphere-Cloud Exchange (PLACE). The PLACE model is a detailed process model of the partly cloudy atmospheric boundary layer and underlying heterogeneous land surfaces. In its development, particular attention has been given to three of the model's subprocesses: the prediction of boundary layer cloud amount, the treatment of surface and soil subgrid heterogeneity, and the liquid water budget. The model includes a three-parameter nonprecipitating cumulus model that feeds back to the surface and boundary layer through radiative effects. Surface heterogeneity in the PLACE model is treated both statistically and by resolving explicit subgrid patches. The model maintains a vertical column of liquid water that is divided into seven reservoirs, from the surface interception store down to bedrock.Five single-day demonstration cases are presented, in which the PLACE model was initialized, run, and compared to field observations from four diverse sites. The model is shown to predict cloud amount well in these while predicting the surface fluxes with similar accuracy. A slight tendency to underpredict boundary layer depth is noted in all cases.Sensitivity tests were also run using anemometer-level forcing provided by the Project for Inter-comparison of Land-surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS). The purpose is to demonstrate the relative impact of heterogeneity of surface parameters on the predicted annual mean surface fluxes. Significant sensitivity to subgrid variability of certain parameters is demonstrated, particularly to parameters related to soil moisture. A major result is that the PLACE-computed impact of total (homogeneous) deforestation of a rain forest is comparable in magnitude to the effect of imposing heterogeneity of certain surface variables, and is similarly comparable to the overall variance among the other PILPS participant models. Were

Anthropogenic perturbation of the carbon fluxes from land to ocean

KAUST Repository

Regnier, Pierre

2013-06-09

A substantial amount of the atmospheric carbon taken up on land through photosynthesis and chemical weathering is transported laterally along the aquatic continuum from upland terrestrial ecosystems to the ocean. So far, global carbon budget estimates have implicitly assumed that the transformation and lateral transport of carbon along this aquatic continuum has remained unchanged since pre-industrial times. A synthesis of published work reveals the magnitude of present-day lateral carbon fluxes from land to ocean, and the extent to which human activities have altered these fluxes. We show that anthropogenic perturbation may have increased the flux of carbon to inland waters by as much as 1.0 Pg C yr -1 since pre-industrial times, mainly owing to enhanced carbon export from soils. Most of this additional carbon input to upstream rivers is either emitted back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (∼0.4 Pg C yr -1) or sequestered in sediments (∼0.5 Pg C yr -1) along the continuum of freshwater bodies, estuaries and coastal waters, leaving only a perturbation carbon input of ∼0.1 Pg C yr -1 to the open ocean. According to our analysis, terrestrial ecosystems store ∼0.9 Pg C yr -1 at present, which is in agreement with results from forest inventories but significantly differs from the figure of 1.5 Pg C yr -1 previously estimated when ignoring changes in lateral carbon fluxes. We suggest that carbon fluxes along the land-ocean aquatic continuum need to be included in global carbon dioxide budgets.

The GEWEX LandFlux project: evaluation of model evaporation using tower-based and globally gridded forcing data

Science.gov (United States)

McCabe, M. F.; Ershadi, A.; Jimenez, C.; Miralles, D. G.; Michel, D.; Wood, E. F.

2016-01-01

Determining the spatial distribution and temporal development of evaporation at regional and global scales is required to improve our understanding of the coupled water and energy cycles and to better monitor any changes in observed trends and variability of linked hydrological processes. With recent international efforts guiding the development of long-term and globally distributed flux estimates, continued product assessments are required to inform upon the selection of suitable model structures and also to establish the appropriateness of these multi-model simulations for global application. In support of the objectives of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Exchanges (GEWEX) LandFlux project, four commonly used evaporation models are evaluated against data from tower-based eddy-covariance observations, distributed across a range of biomes and climate zones. The selected schemes include the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) approach, the Priestley-Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL) model, the Penman-Monteith-based Mu model (PM-Mu) and the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM). Here we seek to examine the fidelity of global evaporation simulations by examining the multi-model response to varying sources of forcing data. To do this, we perform parallel and collocated model simulations using tower-based data together with a global-scale grid-based forcing product. Through quantifying the multi-model response to high-quality tower data, a better understanding of the subsequent model response to the coarse-scale globally gridded data that underlies the LandFlux product can be obtained, while also providing a relative evaluation and assessment of model performance. Using surface flux observations from 45 globally distributed eddy-covariance stations as independent metrics of performance, the tower-based analysis indicated that PT-JPL provided the highest overall statistical performance (0.72; 61 W m-2; 0.65), followed closely by GLEAM (0.68; 64 W m-2

The GEWEX LandFlux project: evaluation of model evaporation using tower-based and globally-gridded forcing data

Science.gov (United States)

McCabe, M. F.; Ershadi, A.; Jimenez, C.; Miralles, D. G.; Michel, D.; Wood, E. F.

2015-08-01

Determining the spatial distribution and temporal development of evaporation at regional and global scales is required to improve our understanding of the coupled water and energy cycles and to better monitor any changes in observed trends and variability of linked hydrological processes. With recent international efforts guiding the development of long-term and globally distributed flux estimates, continued product assessments are required to inform upon the selection of suitable model structures and also to establish the appropriateness of these multi-model simulations for global application. In support of the objectives of the GEWEX LandFlux project, four commonly used evaporation models are evaluated against data from tower-based eddy-covariance observations, distributed across a range of biomes and climate zones. The selected schemes include the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) approach, the Priestley-Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL) model, the Penman-Monteith based Mu model (PM-Mu) and the Global Land Evaporation: the Amsterdam Methodology (GLEAM). Here we seek to examine the fidelity of global evaporation simulations by examining the multi-model response to varying sources of forcing data. To do this, we perform parallel and collocated model simulations using tower-based data together with a global-scale grid-based forcing product. Through quantifying the multi-model response to high-quality tower data, a better understanding of the subsequent model response to coarse-scale globally gridded data that underlies the LandFlux product can be obtained, while also providing a relative evaluation and assessment of model performance. Using surface flux observations from forty-five globally distributed eddy-covariance stations as independent metrics of performance, the tower-based analysis indicated that PT-JPL provided the highest overally statistical performance (0.72; 61 W m-2; 0.65), followed closely by GLEAM (0.68; 64 W m-2; 0.62), with values in

ENVISAT Land Surface Processes. Phase 2

Science.gov (United States)

vandenHurk, B. J. J. M.; Su, Z.; Verhoef, W.; Menenti, M.; Li, Z.-L.; Wan, Z.; Moene, A. F.; Roerink, G.; Jia, I.

2002-01-01

This is a progress report of the 2nd phase of the project ENVISAT- Land Surface Processes, which has a 3-year scope. In this project, preparative research is carried out aiming at the retrieval of land surface characteristics from the ENVISAT sensors MERIS and AATSR, for assimilation into a system for Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). Where in the 1st phase a number of first shot experiments were carried out (aiming at gaining experience with the retrievals and data assimilation procedures), the current 2nd phase has put more emphasis on the assessment and improvement of the quality of the retrieved products. The forthcoming phase will be devoted mainly to the data assimilation experiments and the assessment of the added value of the future ENVISAT products for NWP forecast skill. Referring to the retrieval of albedo, leaf area index and atmospheric corrections, preliminary radiative transfer calculations have been carried out that should enable the retrieval of these parameters once AATSR and MERIS data become available. However, much of this work is still to be carried out. An essential part of work in this area is the design and implementation of software that enables an efficient use of MODTRAN(sub 4) radiative transfer code, and during the current project phase familiarization with these new components has been achieved. Significant progress has been made with the retrieval of component temperatures from directional ATSR-images, and the calculation of surface turbulent heat fluxes from these data. The impact of vegetation cover on the retrieved component temperatures appears manageable, and preliminary comparison of foliage temperature to air temperatures were encouraging. The calculation of surface fluxes using the SEBI concept,which includes a detailed model of the surface roughness ratio, appeared to give results that were in reasonable agreement with local measurements with scintillometer devices. The specification of the atmospheric boundary conditions

A case study of carbon fluxes from land change in the southwest Brazilian Amazon

Science.gov (United States)

Barrett, K.; Rogan, J.; Eastman, J.R.

2009-01-01

Worldwide, land change is responsible for one-fifth of anthropogenic carbon emissions. In Brazil, three-quarters of carbon emissions originate from land change. This study represents a municipal-scale study of carbon fluxes from vegetation in Rio Branco, Brazil. Land-cover maps of pasture, forest, and secondary growth from 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2003 were produced using an unsupervised classification method (overall accuracy = 89%). Carbon fluxes from land change over the decade of imagery were estimated from transitions between land-cover categories for each time interval. This article presents new methods for estimating emissions reductions from carbon stored in the vegetation that replaces forests (e.g., pasture) and sequestration by new (>10-15 years) forests, which reduced gross emissions by 16, 15, and 22% for the period of 1993-1996, 1996-1999, and 1999-2003, respectively. The methods used in the analysis are broadly applicable and provide a comprehensive characterization of regional-scale carbon fluxes from land change.

Benchmarking sensitivity of biophysical processes to leaf area changes in land surface models

Science.gov (United States)

Forzieri, Giovanni; Duveiller, Gregory; Georgievski, Goran; Li, Wei; Robestson, Eddy; Kautz, Markus; Lawrence, Peter; Ciais, Philippe; Pongratz, Julia; Sitch, Stephen; Wiltshire, Andy; Arneth, Almut; Cescatti, Alessandro

2017-04-01

Land surface models (LSM) are widely applied as supporting tools for policy-relevant assessment of climate change and its impact on terrestrial ecosystems, yet knowledge of their performance skills in representing the sensitivity of biophysical processes to changes in vegetation density is still limited. This is particularly relevant in light of the substantial impacts on regional climate associated with the changes in leaf area index (LAI) following the observed global greening. Benchmarking LSMs on the sensitivity of the simulated processes to vegetation density is essential to reduce their uncertainty and improve the representation of these effects. Here we present a novel benchmark system to assess model capacity in reproducing land surface-atmosphere energy exchanges modulated by vegetation density. Through a collaborative effort of different modeling groups, a consistent set of land surface energy fluxes and LAI dynamics has been generated from multiple LSMs, including JSBACH, JULES, ORCHIDEE, CLM4.5 and LPJ-GUESS. Relationships of interannual variations of modeled surface fluxes to LAI changes have been analyzed at global scale across different climatological gradients and compared with satellite-based products. A set of scoring metrics has been used to assess the overall model performances and a detailed analysis in the climate space has been provided to diagnose possible model errors associated to background conditions. Results have enabled us to identify model-specific strengths and deficiencies. An overall best performing model does not emerge from the analyses. However, the comparison with other models that work better under certain metrics and conditions indicates that improvements are expected to be potentially achievable. A general amplification of the biophysical processes mediated by vegetation is found across the different land surface schemes. Grasslands are characterized by an underestimated year-to-year variability of LAI in cold climates

Revised estimates of the annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land management 1850-2000

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Houghton, R.A.

2003-01-01

Recent analyses of land-use change in the US and China, together with the latest estimates of tropical deforestation and afforestation from the FAO, were used to calculate a portion of the annual flux of carbon between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. The calculated flux includes only that portion of the flux resulting from direct human activity. In most regions, activities included the conversion of natural ecosystems to cultivated lands and pastures, including shifting cultivation, harvest of wood (for timber and fuel) and the establishment of tree plantations. In the US, woody encroachment and woodland thickening as a result of fire suppression were also included. The calculated flux of carbon does not include increases or decreases in carbon storage as a result of environmental changes (e.g.; increasing concentrations of CO 2 , N deposition, climatic change or pollution). Globally, the long-term (1850-2000) flux of carbon from changes in land use and management released 156 PgC to the atmosphere, about 60% of it from the tropics. Average annual fluxes during the 1980s and 1990s were 2.0 and 2.2 PgC/yr, respectively, dominated by releases of carbon from the tropics. Outside the tropics, the average net flux of carbon attributable to land-use change and management decreased from a source of 0.06 PgC/yr during the 1980s to a sink of 0.02 PgC/yr during the 1990s. According to the analyses summarized here, changes in land use were responsible for sinks in North America and Europe and for small sources in other non-tropical regions. The revisions were as large as 0.3 PgC/yr in individual regions but were largely offsetting, so that the global estimate for the 1980s was changed little from an earlier estimate. Uncertainties and recent improvements in the data used to calculate the flux of carbon from land-use change are reviewed, and the results are compared to other estimates of flux to evaluate the extent to which processes other than land-use change and

Evaluating Water and Energy Fluxes across Three Land Cover Types in a Desert Urban Environment through a Mobile Eddy Covariance Platform

Science.gov (United States)

Pierini, N.; Vivoni, E. R.; Schreiner-McGraw, A.; Lopez-Castrillo, I.

2015-12-01

The urbanization process transforms a natural landscape into a built environment with many engineered surfaces, leading to significant impacts on surface energy and water fluxes across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Nevertheless, the effects of different urban land covers on energy and water fluxes has been rarely quantified across the large varieties of construction materials, landscaping and vegetation types, and industrial, commercial and residential areas in cities. In this study, we deployed a mobile eddy covariance tower at three different locations in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area to capture a variety of urban land covers. The three locations each represent a common urban class in Phoenix: 1) a dense, xeric landscape (gravel cover and native plants with drip-irrigation systems near tall buildings); 2) a high-density urban site (asphalt-paved parking lot near a high-traffic intersection); and 3) a suburban mesic landscape (sprinkler-irrigated turf grass in a suburban neighborhood). At each site, we measured meteorological variables, including air temperature and relative humidity at three heights, precipitation and pressure, surface temperature, and soil moisture and temperature (where applicable), to complement the eddy covariance measurements of radiation, energy, carbon dioxide and water vapor fluxes. We evaluated the tower footprint at each site to characterize the contributing surface area to the flux measurements, including engineered and landscaping elements, as a function of time for each deployment. The different sites allowed us to compare how turbulent fluxes of water vapor and carbon dioxide vary for these representative urban land covers, in particular with respect to the role of precipitation events and irrigation. While the deployments covered different seasons, from winter to summer in 2015, the variety of daily conditions allowed quantification of the differential response to precipitation events during the winter, pre

The impact of implementing the bare essentials of surface transfer land surface scheme into the BMRC GCM

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yang, Z.L. [Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States); Pitman, A.J. [Macquarie Univ., Sydney (Australia); McAvaney, B. [Bureau of Meterology Research Centre, Melbourne (Australia)] [and others

1995-07-01

This study describes the first order impacts of incorporating a complex land-surface scheme, the bare essentials of surface transfer (BEST), into the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BMRC) global atmospheric general circulation model (GCM). Land seasonal climatologies averaged over the last six years of integrations after equilibrium from the GCM with BEST and without BEST (the control) are compared. The modeled results are evaluated with comprehensive sources of data, including the layer-cloud climatologies project (ISCCP) data from 1983 to 1991 and the surface-observed global data of Warrent et al., a five-year climatology of surface albedo estimated from earth radiation budget experiment (ERBE) top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) radiative fluxes, global grid point datasets of precipitation, and the climatological analyses of surface evaporation and albedo. Emphasis is placed on the surface evaluation of simulations of land-surface conditions such as surface roughness, surface albedo and the surface wetness factor, and on their effects on surface evaporation, precipitation, layer-cloud and surface temperature. The improvements due to the inclusion of BEST are: a realistic geographical distribution of surface roughness, a decrease in surface albedo over areas with seasonal snow cover, an an increase in surface albedo over snow-free land. The simulated reduction in surface evaporation due, in part, to the bio-physical control of vegetation, is also consistent with the previous studies. Since the control climate has a dry bias, the overall simulations from the GCM with BEST are degraded, except for significant improvements for the northern winter hemisphere because of the realistic vegetation-masking effects. The implications of our results for synergistic developments of other aspects of model parameterization schemes such as boundary layer dynamics, clouds, convection and rainfall are discussed. 82 refs., 9 figs., 3 tabs.

Energy flux simulation in heterogeneous cropland - a two year study

Science.gov (United States)

Klein, Christian; Thieme, Christoph; Biernath, Christian; Heinlein, Florian; Priesack, Eckart

2016-04-01

Recent studies show that uncertainties in regional and global climate and weather simulations are partly due to inadequate descriptions of the energy flux exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere [Stainforth et al. 2005]. One major shortcoming is the limitation of the grid-cell resolution, which is recommended to be about at least 3x3 km² in most models due to limitations in the model physics. To represent each individual grid cell most models select one dominant soil type and one dominant land use type. This resolution, however, is often too coarse in regions where the spatial heterogeneity of soil and land use types are high, e.g. in Central Europe. The relevance of vegetation (e.g. crops), ground cover, and soil properties to the moisture and energy exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere is well known [McPherson 2007], but the impact of vegetation growth dynamics on energy fluxes is only partly understood [Gayler et al. 2014]. An elegant method to avoid the shortcoming of grid cell resolution is the so called mosaic approach. This approach is part of the recently developed ecosystem model framework Expert-N [Biernath et al. 2013] . The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of the characteristics of five managed field plots, planted with winter wheat, potato and maize on the near surface soil moistures and on the near surface energy flux exchanges of the soil-plant-atmosphere interface. The simulated energy fluxes were compared with eddy flux tower measurements between the respective fields at the research farm Scheyern, North-West of Munich, Germany. To perform these simulations, we coupled the ecosystem model Expert-N to an analytical footprint model [Mauder & Foken 2011] . The coupled model system has the ability to calculate the mixing ratio of the surface energy fluxes at a given point within one grid cell (in this case at the flux tower between the two fields). The approach accounts for the temporarily and spatially

A method for sensible heat flux model parameterization based on radiometric surface temperature and environmental factors without involving the parameter KB-1

Science.gov (United States)

Zhuang, Qifeng; Wu, Bingfang; Yan, Nana; Zhu, Weiwei; Xing, Qiang

2016-05-01

Sensible heat flux is a key component of land-atmosphere interaction. In most parameterizations it is calculated with surface-air temperature differences and total aerodynamic resistance to heat transfer (Rae) that is related to the KB-1 parameter. Suitable values are hard to obtain since KB-1 is related both to canopy characteristics and environmental conditions. In this paper, a parameterize method for sensible heat flux over vegetated surfaces (maize field and grass land in the Heihe river basin of northwest China) was proposed based on the radiometric surface temperature, surface resistance (Rs) and vapor pressures (saturated and actual) at the surface and the atmosphere above the canopy. A biophysics-based surface resistance model was revised to compute surface resistance with several environmental factors. The total aerodynamic resistance to heat transfer is directly calculated by combining the biophysics-based surface resistance and vapor pressures. One merit of this method is that the calculation of KB-1 can be avoided. The method provides a new way to estimate sensible heat flux over vegetated surfaces and its performance compares well to the LAS measured sensible heat and other empirical or semi-empirical KB-1 based estimations.

Dis-aggregation of airborne flux measurements using footprint analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hutjes, R.W.A.; Vellinga, O.S.; Gioli, B.; Miglietta, F.

2010-01-01

Aircraft measurements of turbulent fluxes are generally being made with the objective to obtain an estimate of regional exchanges between land surface and atmosphere, to investigate the spatial variability of these fluxes, but also to learn something about the fluxes from some or all of the land

Advances in the Surface Renewal Flux Measurement Method

Science.gov (United States)

Shapland, T. M.; McElrone, A.; Paw U, K. T.; Snyder, R. L.

2011-12-01

The measurement of ecosystem-scale energy and mass fluxes between the planetary surface and the atmosphere is crucial for understanding geophysical processes. Surface renewal is a flux measurement technique based on analyzing the turbulent coherent structures that interact with the surface. It is a less expensive technique because it does not require fast-response velocity measurements, but only a fast-response scalar measurement. It is therefore also a useful tool for the study of the global cycling of trace gases. Currently, surface renewal requires calibration against another flux measurement technique, such as eddy covariance, to account for the linear bias of its measurements. We present two advances in the surface renewal theory and methodology that bring the technique closer to becoming a fully independent flux measurement method. The first advance develops the theory of turbulent coherent structure transport associated with the different scales of coherent structures. A novel method was developed for identifying the scalar change rate within structures at different scales. Our results suggest that for canopies less than one meter in height, the second smallest coherent structure scale dominates the energy and mass flux process. Using the method for resolving the scalar exchange rate of the second smallest coherent structure scale, calibration is unnecessary for surface renewal measurements over short canopies. This study forms the foundation for analysis over more complex surfaces. The second advance is a sensor frequency response correction for measuring the sensible heat flux via surface renewal. Inexpensive fine-wire thermocouples are frequently used to record high frequency temperature data in the surface renewal technique. The sensible heat flux is used in conjunction with net radiation and ground heat flux measurements to determine the latent heat flux as the energy balance residual. The robust thermocouples commonly used in field experiments

2-way coupling the hydrological land surface model PROMET with the regional climate model MM5

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Zabel

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Most land surface hydrological models (LSHMs consider land surface processes (e.g. soil–plant–atmosphere interactions, lateral water flows, snow and ice in a spatially detailed manner. The atmosphere is considered as exogenous driver, neglecting feedbacks between the land surface and the atmosphere. On the other hand, regional climate models (RCMs generally simulate land surface processes through coarse descriptions and spatial scales but include land–atmosphere interactions. What is the impact of the differently applied model physics and spatial resolution of LSHMs on the performance of RCMs? What feedback effects are induced by different land surface models? This study analyses the impact of replacing the land surface module (LSM within an RCM with a high resolution LSHM. A 2-way coupling approach was applied using the LSHM PROMET (1 × 1 km2 and the atmospheric part of the RCM MM5 (45 × 45 km2. The scaling interface SCALMET is used for down- and upscaling the linear and non-linear fluxes between the model scales. The change in the atmospheric response by MM5 using the LSHM is analysed, and its quality is compared to observations of temperature and precipitation for a 4 yr period from 1996 to 1999 for the Upper Danube catchment. By substituting the Noah-LSM with PROMET, simulated non-bias-corrected near-surface air temperature improves for annual, monthly and daily courses when compared to measurements from 277 meteorological weather stations within the Upper Danube catchment. The mean annual bias was improved from −0.85 to −0.13 K. In particular, the improved afternoon heating from May to September is caused by increased sensible heat flux and decreased latent heat flux as well as more incoming solar radiation in the fully coupled PROMET/MM5 in comparison to the NOAH/MM5 simulation. Triggered by the LSM replacement, precipitation overall is reduced; however simulated precipitation amounts are still of high uncertainty, both

The effects of sea surface temperature gradients on surface turbulent fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Steffen, John

A positive correlation between sea surface temperature (SST) and wind stress perturbation near strong SST gradients (DeltaSST) has been observed in different parts of the world ocean, such as the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic and the Kuroshio Extension east of Japan. These changes in winds and SSTs can modify near-surface stability, surface stress, and latent and sensible heat fluxes. In general, these small scale processes are poorly modeled in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and climate models. Failure to account for these air--sea interactions produces inaccurate values of turbulent fluxes, and therefore a misrepresentation of the energy, moisture, and momentum budgets. Our goal is to determine the change in these surface turbulent fluxes due to overlooking the correlated variability in winds, SSTs, and related variables. To model these air--sea interactions, a flux model was forced with and without SST--induced changes to the surface wind fields. The SST modification to the wind fields is based on a baroclinic argument as implemented by the University of Washington Planetary Boundary-Layer (UWPBL) model. Other input parameters include 2-m air temperature, 2-m dew point temperature, surface pressure (all from ERA--interim), and Reynolds Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST). Flux model runs are performed every 6 hours starting in December 2002 and ending in November 2003. From these model outputs, seasonal, monthly, and daily means of the difference between DeltaSST and no DeltaSST effects on sensible heat flux (SHF), latent heat flux (LHF), and surface stress are calculated. Since the greatest impacts occur during the winter season, six additional December-January-February (DJF) seasons were analyzed for 1987--1990 and 1999--2002. The greatest differences in surface turbulent fluxes are concentrated near strong SST fronts associated with the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio Extension. On average, 2002---2003 DJF seasonal differences in SHF

Enhancing the representation of subgrid land surface characteristics in land surface models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Y. Ke

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Land surface heterogeneity has long been recognized as important to represent in the land surface models. In most existing land surface models, the spatial variability of surface cover is represented as subgrid composition of multiple surface cover types, although subgrid topography also has major controls on surface processes. In this study, we developed a new subgrid classification method (SGC that accounts for variability of both topography and vegetation cover. Each model grid cell was represented with a variable number of elevation classes and each elevation class was further described by a variable number of vegetation types optimized for each model grid given a predetermined total number of land response units (LRUs. The subgrid structure of the Community Land Model (CLM was used to illustrate the newly developed method in this study. Although the new method increases the computational burden in the model simulation compared to the CLM subgrid vegetation representation, it greatly reduced the variations of elevation within each subgrid class and is able to explain at least 80% of the total subgrid plant functional types (PFTs. The new method was also evaluated against two other subgrid methods (SGC1 and SGC2 that assigned fixed numbers of elevation and vegetation classes for each model grid (SGC1: M elevation bands–N PFTs method; SGC2: N PFTs–M elevation bands method. Implemented at five model resolutions (0.1°, 0.25°, 0.5°, 1.0°and 2.0° with three maximum-allowed total number of LRUs (i.e., NLRU of 24, 18 and 12 over North America (NA, the new method yielded more computationally efficient subgrid representation compared to SGC1 and SGC2, particularly at coarser model resolutions and moderate computational intensity (NLRU = 18. It also explained the most PFTs and elevation variability that is more homogeneously distributed spatially. The SGC method will be implemented in CLM over the NA continent to assess its impacts on

Importance of Preserving Cross-correlation in developing Statistically Downscaled Climate Forcings and in estimating Land-surface Fluxes and States

Science.gov (United States)

Das Bhowmik, R.; Arumugam, S.

2015-12-01

Multivariate downscaling techniques exhibited superiority over univariate regression schemes in terms of preserving cross-correlations between multiple variables- precipitation and temperature - from GCMs. This study focuses on two aspects: (a) develop an analytical solutions on estimating biases in cross-correlations from univariate downscaling approaches and (b) quantify the uncertainty in land-surface states and fluxes due to biases in cross-correlations in downscaled climate forcings. Both these aspects are evaluated using climate forcings available from both historical climate simulations and CMIP5 hindcasts over the entire US. The analytical solution basically relates the univariate regression parameters, co-efficient of determination of regression and the co-variance ratio between GCM and downscaled values. The analytical solutions are compared with the downscaled univariate forcings by choosing the desired p-value (Type-1 error) in preserving the observed cross-correlation. . For quantifying the impacts of biases on cross-correlation on estimating streamflow and groundwater, we corrupt the downscaled climate forcings with different cross-correlation structure.

Uncertainties of Large-Scale Forcing Caused by Surface Turbulence Flux Measurements and the Impacts on Cloud Simulations at the ARM SGP Site

Science.gov (United States)

Tang, S.; Xie, S.; Tang, Q.; Zhang, Y.

2017-12-01

Two types of instruments, the eddy correlation flux measurement system (ECOR) and the energy balance Bowen ratio system (EBBR), are used at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program Southern Great Plains (SGP) site to measure surface latent and sensible fluxes. ECOR and EBBR typically sample different land surface types, and the domain-mean surface fluxes derived from ECOR and EBBR are not always consistent. The uncertainties of the surface fluxes will have impacts on the derived large-scale forcing data and further affect the simulations of single-column models (SCM), cloud-resolving models (CRM) and large-eddy simulation models (LES), especially for the shallow-cumulus clouds which are mainly driven by surface forcing. This study aims to quantify the uncertainties of the large-scale forcing caused by surface turbulence flux measurements and investigate the impacts on cloud simulations using long-term observations from the ARM SGP site.

The GEWEX LandFlux project: evaluation of model evaporation using tower-based and globally gridded forcing data

KAUST Repository

McCabe, Matthew; Ershadi, Ali; Jimenez, C.; Miralles, Diego G.; Michel, D.; Wood, E. F.

2016-01-01

Determining the spatial distribution and temporal development of evaporation at regional and global scales is required to improve our understanding of the coupled water and energy cycles and to better monitor any changes in observed trends and variability of linked hydrological processes. With recent international efforts guiding the development of long-term and globally distributed flux estimates, continued product assessments are required to inform upon the selection of suitable model structures and also to establish the appropriateness of these multi-model simulations for global application. In support of the objectives of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Exchanges (GEWEX) LandFlux project, four commonly used evaporation models are evaluated against data from tower-based eddy-covariance observations, distributed across a range of biomes and climate zones. The selected schemes include the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) approach, the Priestley–Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL) model, the Penman–Monteith-based Mu model (PM-Mu) and the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM). Here we seek to examine the fidelity of global evaporation simulations by examining the multi-model response to varying sources of forcing data. To do this, we perform parallel and collocated model simulations using tower-based data together with a global-scale grid-based forcing product. Through quantifying the multi-model response to high-quality tower data, a better understanding of the subsequent model response to the coarse-scale globally gridded data that underlies the LandFlux product can be obtained, while also providing a relative evaluation and assessment of model performance.

Using surface flux observations from 45 globally distributed eddy-covariance stations as independent metrics of performance, the tower-based analysis indicated that PT-JPL provided the highest overall statistical performance (0.72; 61 W m⁻²; 0.65), followed

The GEWEX LandFlux project: evaluation of model evaporation using tower-based and globally gridded forcing data

KAUST Repository

McCabe, Matthew

2016-01-26

Determining the spatial distribution and temporal development of evaporation at regional and global scales is required to improve our understanding of the coupled water and energy cycles and to better monitor any changes in observed trends and variability of linked hydrological processes. With recent international efforts guiding the development of long-term and globally distributed flux estimates, continued product assessments are required to inform upon the selection of suitable model structures and also to establish the appropriateness of these multi-model simulations for global application. In support of the objectives of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Exchanges (GEWEX) LandFlux project, four commonly used evaporation models are evaluated against data from tower-based eddy-covariance observations, distributed across a range of biomes and climate zones. The selected schemes include the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) approach, the Priestley–Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL) model, the Penman–Monteith-based Mu model (PM-Mu) and the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM). Here we seek to examine the fidelity of global evaporation simulations by examining the multi-model response to varying sources of forcing data. To do this, we perform parallel and collocated model simulations using tower-based data together with a global-scale grid-based forcing product. Through quantifying the multi-model response to high-quality tower data, a better understanding of the subsequent model response to the coarse-scale globally gridded data that underlies the LandFlux product can be obtained, while also providing a relative evaluation and assessment of model performance.

Using surface flux observations from 45 globally distributed eddy-covariance stations as independent metrics of performance, the tower-based analysis indicated that PT-JPL provided the highest overall statistical performance (0.72; 61 W m⁻²; 0.65), followed

The GEWEX LandFlux project: evaluation of model evaporation using tower-based and globally-gridded forcing data

KAUST Repository

McCabe, Matthew

2015-08-24

Determining the spatial distribution and temporal development of evaporation at regional and global scales is required to improve our understanding of the coupled water and energy cycles and to better monitor any changes in observed trends and variability of linked hydrological processes. With recent international efforts guiding the development of long-term and globally distributed flux estimates, continued product assessments are required to inform upon the selection of suitable model structures and also to establish the appropriateness of these multi-model simulations for global application. In support of the objectives of the GEWEX LandFlux project, four commonly used evaporation models are evaluated against data from tower-based eddy-covariance observations, distributed across a range of biomes and climate zones. The selected schemes include the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) approach, the Priestley-Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory (PT-JPL) model, the Penman-Monteith based Mu model (PM-Mu) and the Global Land Evaporation: the Amsterdam Methodology (GLEAM). Here we seek to examine the fidelity of global evaporation simulations by examining the multi-model response to varying sources of forcing data. To do this, we perform parallel and collocated model simulations using tower-based data together with a global-scale grid-based forcing product. Through quantifying the multi-model response to high-quality tower data, a better understanding of the subsequent model response to coarse-scale globally gridded data that underlies the LandFlux product can be obtained, while also providing a relative evaluation and assessment of model performance.

Using surface flux observations from forty-five globally distributed eddy-covariance stations as independent metrics of performance, the tower-based analysis indicated that PT-JPL provided the highest overally statistical performance (0.72; 61 W m⁻²; 0.65), followed closely by GLEAM (0.68; 64 W m

Comparison of sea surface flux measured by instrumented aircraft and ship during SOFIA and SEMAPHORE experiments

Science.gov (United States)

Durand, Pierre; Dupuis, HéLèNe; Lambert, Dominique; BéNech, Bruno; Druilhet, Aimé; Katsaros, Kristina; Taylor, Peter K.; Weill, Alain

1998-10-01

considerable at upper levels in the boundary layer. From arguments linked to the imbalance of the surface energy budget, established during previous campaigns performed over land surfaces with aircraft, we conclude that aircraft heat fluxes are probably also underestimated over the sea.

Towards an improved and more flexible representation of water stress in coupled photosynthesis-stomatal conductance models; implications for simulated land surface fluxes and variables at various spatiotemporal scales

Science.gov (United States)

Egea, G.; Verhoef, A.; Vidale, P. L.; Black, E.; Van den Hoof, C.

2012-04-01

Coupled photosynthesis-stomatal conductance (A-gs) models are commonly used in ecosystem models to represent the exchange rate of CO2 and H2O between vegetation and the atmosphere. The ways these models account for water stress differ greatly among modelling schemes. This study provides insight into the impact of contrasting model configurations of water stress on the simulated leaf-level values of net photosynthesis (A), stomatal conductance (gs), the functional relationship among them and their ratio, the intrinsic water use efficiency (A/gs), as soil dries. A simple, yet versatile, normalized soil moisture dependent function was used to account for the effects of water stress on gs, on mesophyll conductance (gm ) and on the biochemical capacity (Egea et al., 2011). Model output was compared to leaf-level values obtained from the literature. The sensitivity analyses emphasized the necessity to combine both stomatal and non-stomatal limitations of A in coupled A-gs models to accurately capture the observed functional relationships A vs. gs and A/gs vs. gs in response to drought. Accounting for water stress in coupled A-gs models by imposing either stomatal or biochemical limitations of A, as commonly practiced in most ecosystem models, failed to reproduce the observed functional relationship between key leaf gas exchange attributes. A quantitative limitation analysis revealed that the general pattern of C3 photosynthetic response to water stress can be represented in coupled A-gs models by imposing the highest limitation strength to mesophyll conductance, then to stomatal conductance and finally to the biochemical capacity. This more realistic representation of soil water stress on the simulated leaf-level values of A and gs was embedded in the JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator; Best et al., 2011), model and tested for a number of vegetation types, for which driving and flux verification data were available. These simulations provide an insight into the

Land-Surface-Atmosphere Coupling in Observations and Models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alan K Betts

2009-07-01

Full Text Available The diurnal cycle and the daily mean at the land-surface result from the coupling of many physical processes. The framework of this review is largely conceptual; looking for relationships and information in the coupling of processes in models and observations. Starting from the surface energy balance, the role of the surface and cloud albedos in the shortwave and longwave fluxes is discussed. A long-wave radiative scaling of the diurnal temperature range and the night-time boundary layer is summarized. Several aspects of the local surface energy partition are presented: the role of soilwater availability and clouds; vector methods for understanding mixed layer evolution, and the coupling between surface and boundary layer that determines the lifting condensation level. Moving to larger scales, evaporation-precipitation feedback in models is discussed; and the coupling of column water vapor, clouds and precipitation to vertical motion and moisture convergence over the Amazon. The final topic is a comparison of the ratio of surface shortwave cloud forcing to the diabatic precipitation forcing of the atmosphere in ERA-40 with observations.

Estimating Hydrologic Fluxes, Crop Water Use, and Agricultural Land Area in China using Data Assimilation

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Tiziana; McLaughlin, Dennis B.; Hoisungwan, Piyatida

2016-04-01

Crop production has significantly altered the terrestrial environment by changing land use and by altering the water cycle through both co-opted rainfall and surface water withdrawals. As the world's population continues to grow and individual diets become more resource-intensive, the demand for food - and the land and water necessary to produce it - will continue to increase. High-resolution quantitative data about water availability, water use, and agricultural land use are needed to develop sustainable water and agricultural planning and policies. However, existing data covering large areas with high resolution are susceptible to errors and can be physically inconsistent. China is an example of a large area where food demand is expected to increase and a lack of data clouds the resource management dialogue. Some assert that China will have insufficient land and water resources to feed itself, posing a threat to global food security if they seek to increase food imports. Others believe resources are plentiful. Without quantitative data, it is difficult to discern if these concerns are realistic or overly dramatized. This research presents a quantitative approach using data assimilation techniques to characterize hydrologic fluxes, crop water use (defined as crop evapotranspiration), and agricultural land use at 0.5 by 0.5 degree resolution and applies the methodology in China using data from around the year 2000. The approach uses the principles of water balance and of crop water requirements to assimilate existing data with a least-squares estimation technique, producing new estimates of water and land use variables that are physically consistent while minimizing differences from measured data. We argue that this technique for estimating water fluxes and agricultural land use can provide a useful basis for resource management modeling and policy, both in China and around the world.

Increased terrestrial to ocean sediment and carbon fluxes in the northern Chesapeake Bay associated with twentieth century land alteration

Science.gov (United States)

Saenger, C.; Cronin, T. M.; Willard, D.; Halka, J.; Kerhin, R.

2008-01-01

We calculated Chesapeake Bay (CB) sediment and carbon fluxes before and after major anthropogenic land clearance using robust monitoring, modeling and sedimentary data. Four distinct fluxes in the estuarine system were considered including (1) the flux of eroded material from the watershed to streams, (2) the flux of suspended sediment at river fall lines, (3) the burial flux in tributary sediments, and (4) the burial flux in main CB sediments. The sedimentary maximum in Ambrosia (ragweed) pollen marked peak land clearance (~1900 a.d.). Rivers feeding CB had a total organic carbon (TOC)/total suspended solids of 0.24??0.12, and we used this observation to calculate TOC fluxes from sediment fluxes. Sediment and carbon fluxes increased by 138-269% across all four regions after land clearance. Our results demonstrate that sediment delivery to CB is subject to significant lags and that excess post-land clearance sediment loads have not reached the ocean. Post-land clearance increases in erosional flux from watersheds, and burial in estuaries are important processes that must be considered to calculate accurate global sediment and carbon budgets. ?? 2008 Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation.

Turbulent transport across invariant canonical flux surfaces

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hollenberg, J.B.; Callen, J.D.

1994-07-01

Net transport due to a combination of Coulomb collisions and turbulence effects in a plasma is investigated using a fluid moment description that allows for kinetic and nonlinear effects via closure relations. The model considered allows for ''ideal'' turbulent fluctuations that distort but preserve the topology of species-dependent canonical flux surfaces ψ number-sign,s triple-bond ∫ dF · B number-sign,s triple-bond ∇ x [A + (m s /q s )u s ] in which u s is the flow velocity of the fluid species. Equations for the net transport relative to these surfaces due to ''nonideal'' dissipative processes are found for the total number of particles and total entropy enclosed by a moving canonical flux surface. The corresponding particle transport flux is calculated using a toroidal axisymmetry approximation of the ideal surfaces. The resulting Lagrangian transport flux includes classical, neoclassical-like, and anomalous contributions and shows for the first time how these various contributions should be summed to obtain the total particle transport flux

Seasonal evaluation of the land surface sheme HTESSEL against remote sensing derived energy fluxes of the Transdanubian regions in Hungary

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wipfler, E.L.; Metselaar, K.; Dam, van J.C.; Feddes, R.A.; Meijgaard, van E.; Ulft, van L.H.; Hurk, van den B.; Zwart, S.J.; Bastiaanssen, W.G.M.

2011-01-01

The skill of the land surface model HTESSEL is assessed to reproduce evaporation in response to land surface characteristics and atmospheric forcing, both being spatially variable. Evaporation estimates for the 2005 growing season are inferred from satellite observations of the Western part of

Land Surface Verification Toolkit (LVT) - A Generalized Framework for Land Surface Model Evaluation

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Sujay V.; Peters-Lidard, Christa D.; Santanello, Joseph; Harrison, Ken; Liu, Yuqiong; Shaw, Michael

2011-01-01

Model evaluation and verification are key in improving the usage and applicability of simulation models for real-world applications. In this article, the development and capabilities of a formal system for land surface model evaluation called the Land surface Verification Toolkit (LVT) is described. LVT is designed to provide an integrated environment for systematic land model evaluation and facilitates a range of verification approaches and analysis capabilities. LVT operates across multiple temporal and spatial scales and employs a large suite of in-situ, remotely sensed and other model and reanalysis datasets in their native formats. In addition to the traditional accuracy-based measures, LVT also includes uncertainty and ensemble diagnostics, information theory measures, spatial similarity metrics and scale decomposition techniques that provide novel ways for performing diagnostic model evaluations. Though LVT was originally designed to support the land surface modeling and data assimilation framework known as the Land Information System (LIS), it also supports hydrological data products from other, non-LIS environments. In addition, the analysis of diagnostics from various computational subsystems of LIS including data assimilation, optimization and uncertainty estimation are supported within LVT. Together, LIS and LVT provide a robust end-to-end environment for enabling the concepts of model data fusion for hydrological applications. The evolving capabilities of LVT framework are expected to facilitate rapid model evaluation efforts and aid the definition and refinement of formal evaluation procedures for the land surface modeling community.

Land surface Verification Toolkit (LVT) - a generalized framework for land surface model evaluation

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, S. V.; Peters-Lidard, C. D.; Santanello, J.; Harrison, K.; Liu, Y.; Shaw, M.

2012-06-01

Model evaluation and verification are key in improving the usage and applicability of simulation models for real-world applications. In this article, the development and capabilities of a formal system for land surface model evaluation called the Land surface Verification Toolkit (LVT) is described. LVT is designed to provide an integrated environment for systematic land model evaluation and facilitates a range of verification approaches and analysis capabilities. LVT operates across multiple temporal and spatial scales and employs a large suite of in-situ, remotely sensed and other model and reanalysis datasets in their native formats. In addition to the traditional accuracy-based measures, LVT also includes uncertainty and ensemble diagnostics, information theory measures, spatial similarity metrics and scale decomposition techniques that provide novel ways for performing diagnostic model evaluations. Though LVT was originally designed to support the land surface modeling and data assimilation framework known as the Land Information System (LIS), it supports hydrological data products from non-LIS environments as well. In addition, the analysis of diagnostics from various computational subsystems of LIS including data assimilation, optimization and uncertainty estimation are supported within LVT. Together, LIS and LVT provide a robust end-to-end environment for enabling the concepts of model data fusion for hydrological applications. The evolving capabilities of LVT framework are expected to facilitate rapid model evaluation efforts and aid the definition and refinement of formal evaluation procedures for the land surface modeling community.

A new MRI land surface model HAL

Science.gov (United States)

Hosaka, M.

2011-12-01

A land surface model HAL is newly developed for MRI-ESM1. It is used for the CMIP simulations. HAL consists of three submodels: SiByl (vegetation), SNOWA (snow) and SOILA (soil) in the current version. It also contains a land coupler LCUP which connects some submodels and an atmospheric model. The vegetation submodel SiByl has surface vegetation processes similar to JMA/SiB (Sato et al. 1987, Hirai et al. 2007). SiByl has 2 vegetation layers (canopy and grass) and calculates heat, moisture, and momentum fluxes between the land surface and the atmosphere. The snow submodel SNOWA can have any number of snow layers and the maximum value is set to 8 for the CMIP5 experiments. Temperature, SWE, density, grain size and the aerosol deposition contents of each layer are predicted. The snow properties including the grain size are predicted due to snow metamorphism processes (Niwano et al., 2011), and the snow albedo is diagnosed from the aerosol mixing ratio, the snow properties and the temperature (Aoki et al., 2011). The soil submodel SOILA can also have any number of soil layers, and is composed of 14 soil layers in the CMIP5 experiments. The temperature of each layer is predicted by solving heat conduction equations. The soil moisture is predicted by solving the Darcy equation, in which hydraulic conductivity depends on the soil moisture. The land coupler LCUP is designed to enable the complicated constructions of the submidels. HAL can include some competing submodels (precise and detailed ones, and simpler ones), and they can run at the same simulations. LCUP enables a 2-step model validation, in which we compare the results of the detailed submodels with the in-situ observation directly at the 1st step, and follows the comparison between them and those of the simpler ones at the 2nd step. When the performances of the detailed ones are good, we can improve the simpler ones by using the detailed ones as reference models.

Soil surface Hg emission flux in coalfield in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Chunhui; Liang, Handong; Liang, Ming; Chen, Yang; Zhou, Yi

2018-03-30

Hg emission flux from various land covers, such as forests, wetlands, and urban areas, have been investigated. China has the largest area of coalfield in the world, but data of Hg flux of coalfields, especially, those with coal fires, are seriously limited. In this study, Hg fluxes of a coalfield were measured using the dynamic flux chamber (DFC) method, coupled with a Lumex multifunctional Hg analyzer RA-915+ (Lumex Ltd., Russia). The results show that the Hg flux in Wuda coalfield ranged from 4 to 318 ng m -2  h -1 , and the average value for different areas varied, e.g., coal-fire area 99 and 177 ng m -2  h -1 ; no coal-fire area 19 and 32 ng m -2  h -1 ; and backfilling area 53 ng m -2  h -1 . Hg continued to be emitted from an underground coal seam, even if there were no phenomena, such as vents, cracks, and smog, of coal fire on the soil surface. This phenomenon occurred in all area types, i.e., coal-fire area, no coal-fire area, and backfilling area, which is universal in Wuda coalfield. Considering that many coalfields in northern China are similar to Wuda coalfield, they may be large sources of atmospheric Hg. The correlations of Hg emission flux with influence factors, such as sunlight intensity, soil surface temperature, and atmospheric Hg content, were also investigated for Wuda coalfield. Graphical abstract ᅟ.

Selection of soil hydraulic properties in a land surface model using remotely-sensed soil moisture and surface temperature

Science.gov (United States)

Shellito, P. J.; Small, E. E.; Gutmann, E. D.

2013-12-01

Synoptic-scale weather is heavily influenced by latent and sensible heating from the land surface. The partitioning of available energy between these two fluxes as well as the distribution of moisture throughout the soil column is controlled by a unique set of soil hydraulic properties (SHPs) at every location. Weather prediction systems, which use coupled land surface and atmospheric models in their forecasts, must therefore be parameterized with estimates of SHPs. Currently, land surface models (LSMs) obtain SHP values by assuming a correlation exists between SHPs and the soil type, which the USDA maps in 12 classes. This method is spurious because texture is only one control of many that affects SHPs. Alternatively, SHPs can be obtained by calibrating them within the framework of an LSM. Because remotely-sensed data have the potential for continent-wide application, there is a critical need to understand their specific role in calibration efforts and the extent to which such calibrated SHPs can improve model simulations. This study focuses on SHP calibration with soil moisture content (SMC) and land surface temperature (Ts), data that are available from the SMOS and MODIS satellite missions, respectively. The scientific goals of this study are: (1) What is the model performance tradeoff between weighting SMC and Ts differently during the calibration process? (2) What can the tradeoff between calibration using in-situ and remotely-sensed SMC reveal about SHP scaling? (3) How are these relationships influenced by climatic regime and vegetation type? (4) To what extent can calibrated SHPs improve model performance over that of texture-based SHPs? Model calibrations are carried out within the framework of the Noah LSM using the Shuffled Complex Evolution Metropolis (SCEM-UA) algorithm in five different climatic regimes. At each site, a five-dimensional parameter space of SHPs is searched to find the location that minimizes the difference between observed and

Comparison of surface energy fluxes with satellite-derived surface energy flux estimates from a shrub-steppe

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kirkham, R.R.

1993-12-01

This thesis relates the components of the surface energy balance (i.e., net radiation, sensible and latent heat flux densities, soil heat flow) to remotely sensed data for native vegetation in a semi-arid environment. Thematic mapper data from Landsat 4 and 5 were used to estimate net radiation, sensible heat flux (H), and vegetation amount. Several sources of ground truth were employed. They included soil water balance using the neutron thermalization method and weighing lysimeters, and the measurement of energy fluxes with the Bowen ratio energy balance (BREB) technique. Sensible and latent heat flux were measured at four sites on the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site using a weighing lysimeter and/or BREB stations. The objective was to calibrate an aerodynamic transport equation that related H to radiant surface temperature. The transport equation was then used with Landsat thermal data to generate estimates of H and compare these estimates against H values obtained with BREB/lysimeters at the time of overflight. Landsat and surface meteorologic data were used to estimate the radiation budget terms at the surface. Landsat estimates of short-wave radiation reflected from the surface correlate well with reflected radiation measured using inverted Eppley pyranometers. Correlation of net radiation estimates determined from satellite data, pyranometer, air temperature, and vapor pressure compared to net radiometer values obtained at time of overflight were excellent for a single image, but decrease for multiple images. Soil heat flux, G T , is a major component of the energy balance in arid systems and G T generally decreases as vegetation cover increases. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values generated from Landsat thermatic mapper data were representative of field observations of the presence of green vegetation, but it was not possible to determine a single relationship between NDVI and G T for all sites

Is X-ray emissivity constant on magnetic flux surfaces?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Granetz, R.S.; Borras, M.C.

1997-01-01

Knowledge of the elongations and shifts of internal magnetic flux surfaces can be used to determine the q profile in elongated tokamak plasmas. X-ray tomography is thought to be a reasonable technique for independently measuring internal flux surface shapes, because it is widely believed that X-ray emissivity should be constant on a magnetic flux surface. In the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, the X-ray tomography diagnostic system consists of four arrays of 38 chords each. A comparison of reconstructed X-ray contours with magnetic flux surfaces shows a small but consistent discrepancy in the radial profile of elongation. Numerous computational tests have been performed to verify these findings, including tests of the sensitivity to calibration and viewing geometry errors, the accuracy of the tomography reconstruction algorithms, and other subtler effects. We conclude that the discrepancy between the X-ray contours and the magnetic flux surfaces is real, leading to the conclusion that X-ray emissivity is not exactly constant on a flux surface. (orig.)

A critical assessment of the JULES land surface model hydrology for humid tropical environments

Science.gov (United States)

Zulkafli, Z.; Buytaert, W.; Onof, C.; Lavado, W.; Guyot, J. L.

2013-03-01

Global land surface models (LSMs) such as the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) are originally developed to provide surface boundary conditions for climate models. They are increasingly used for hydrological simulation, for instance to simulate the impacts of land use changes and other perturbations on the water cycle. This study investigates how well such models represent the major hydrological fluxes at the relevant spatial and temporal scales - an important question for reliable model applications in poorly understood, data-scarce environments. The JULES-LSM is implemented in a 360 000 km2 humid tropical mountain basin of the Peruvian Andes-Amazon at 12-km grid resolution, forced with daily satellite and climate reanalysis data. The simulations are evaluated using conventional discharge-based evaluation methods, and by further comparing the magnitude and internal variability of the basin surface fluxes such as evapotranspiration, throughfall, and surface and subsurface runoff of the model with those observed in similar environments elsewhere. We find reasonably positive model efficiencies and high correlations between the simulated and observed streamflows, but high root-mean-square errors affecting the performance in smaller, upper sub-basins. We attribute this to errors in the water balance and JULES-LSM's inability to model baseflow. We also found a tendency to under-represent the high evapotranspiration rates of the region. We conclude that strategies to improve the representation of tropical systems to be (1) addressing errors in the forcing and (2) incorporating local wetland and regional floodplain in the subsurface representation.

Hydrologic Remote Sensing and Land Surface Data Assimilation.

Science.gov (United States)

Moradkhani, Hamid

2008-05-06

Accurate, reliable and skillful forecasting of key environmental variables such as soil moisture and snow are of paramount importance due to their strong influence on many water resources applications including flood control, agricultural production and effective water resources management which collectively control the behavior of the climate system. Soil moisture is a key state variable in land surface-atmosphere interactions affecting surface energy fluxes, runoff and the radiation balance. Snow processes also have a large influence on land-atmosphere energy exchanges due to snow high albedo, low thermal conductivity and considerable spatial and temporal variability resulting in the dramatic change on surface and ground temperature. Measurement of these two variables is possible through variety of methods using ground-based and remote sensing procedures. Remote sensing, however, holds great promise for soil moisture and snow measurements which have considerable spatial and temporal variability. Merging these measurements with hydrologic model outputs in a systematic and effective way results in an improvement of land surface model prediction. Data Assimilation provides a mechanism to combine these two sources of estimation. Much success has been attained in recent years in using data from passive microwave sensors and assimilating them into the models. This paper provides an overview of the remote sensing measurement techniques for soil moisture and snow data and describes the advances in data assimilation techniques through the ensemble filtering, mainly Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and Particle filter (PF), for improving the model prediction and reducing the uncertainties involved in prediction process. It is believed that PF provides a complete representation of the probability distribution of state variables of interests (according to sequential Bayes law) and could be a strong alternative to EnKF which is subject to some limitations including the linear

Forward-looking Assimilation of MODIS-derived Snow Covered Area into a Land Surface Model

Science.gov (United States)

Zaitchik, Benjamin F.; Rodell, Matthew

2008-01-01

Snow cover over land has a significant impact on the surface radiation budget, turbulent energy fluxes to the atmosphere, and local hydrological fluxes. For this reason, inaccuracies in the representation of snow covered area (SCA) within a land surface model (LSM) can lead to substantial errors in both offline and coupled simulations. Data assimilation algorithms have the potential to address this problem. However, the assimilation of SCA observations is complicated by an information deficit in the observation SCA indicates only the presence or absence of snow, and not snow volume and by the fact that assimilated SCA observations can introduce inconsistencies with atmospheric forcing data, leading to non-physical artifacts in the local water balance. In this paper we present a novel assimilation algorithm that introduces MODIS SCA observations to the Noah LSM in global, uncoupled simulations. The algorithm utilizes observations from up to 72 hours ahead of the model simulation in order to correct against emerging errors in the simulation of snow cover while preserving the local hydrologic balance. This is accomplished by using future snow observations to adjust air temperature and, when necessary, precipitation within the LSM. In global, offline integrations, this new assimilation algorithm provided improved simulation of SCA and snow water equivalent relative to open loop integrations and integrations that used an earlier SCA assimilation algorithm. These improvements, in turn, influenced the simulation of surface water and energy fluxes both during the snow season and, in some regions, on into the following spring.

Simulating carbon exchange using a regional atmospheric model coupled to an advanced land-surface model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ter Maat, H.W.; Hutjes, R.W.A.; Miglietta, F.; Gioli, B.; Bosveld, F.C.; Vermeulen, A.T.; Fritsch, H.

2010-08-01

This paper is a case study to investigate what the main controlling factors are that determine atmospheric carbon dioxide content for a region in the centre of The Netherlands. We use the Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS), coupled with a land surface scheme simulating carbon, heat and momentum fluxes (SWAPS-C), and including also submodels for urban and marine fluxes, which in principle should include the dominant mechanisms and should be able to capture the relevant dynamics of the system. To validate the model, observations are used that were taken during an intensive observational campaign in central Netherlands in summer 2002. These include flux-tower observations and aircraft observations of vertical profiles and spatial fluxes of various variables.

Global patterns of land-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide, latent heat, and sensible heat derived from eddy covariance, satellite, and meteorological observations

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, J.; Reichstein, M.

2012-12-01

We upscaled FLUXNET observations of carbon dioxide, water and energy fluxes to the global scale using the machine learning technique, Model Tree Ensembles (MTE). We trained MTE to predict site-level gross primary productivity (GPP), terrestrial ecosystem respiration (TER), net ecosystem exchange (NEE), latent energy (LE), and sensible heat (H) based on remote sensing indices, climate and meteorological data, and information on land use. We applied the trained MTEs to generate global flux fields at a 0.5° x 0.5o spatial resolution and a monthly temporal resolution from 1982-2008. Cross-validation analyses revealed good performance of MTE in predicting among-site flux variability with modeling efficiencies (MEf) between 0.64 and 0.84, except for NEE (MEf = 0.32). Performance was also good for predicting seasonal patterns (MEf between 0.84 and 0.89, except for NEE (0.64)). By comparison, predictions of monthly anomalies were weak. Our products are increasingly used to evaluate global land surface models. However, depending on the flux of interest (e.g. gross primary production, terrestrial ecosystem respiration, net ecosystem exchange, evapotranspiration) and the pattern of interest (mean annual map, seasonal cycles, interannual variability, trends) the robustness and uncertainty of these products varies considerably. To avoid pitfalls, this talk also aims at providing an overview of uncertainties associated with these products, and to provide recommendations on the usage for land surface model evaluations. Finally, we present FLUXCOM - an ongoing activity that aims at generating an ensemble of data-driven FLUXNET based products based on diverse approaches.

Evaluation of NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Flux Pilot: Terrestrial CO2 Fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Fisher, J. B.; Polhamus, A.; Bowman, K. W.; Collatz, G. J.; Potter, C. S.; Lee, M.; Liu, J.; Jung, M.; Reichstein, M.

2011-12-01

NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) flux pilot project combines NASA's Earth System models in land, ocean and atmosphere to track surface CO2 fluxes. The system is constrained by atmospheric measurements of XCO2 from the Japanese GOSAT satellite, giving a "big picture" view of total CO2 in Earth's atmosphere. Combining two land models (CASA-Ames and CASA-GFED), two ocean models (ECCO2 and NOBM) and two atmospheric chemistry and inversion models (GEOS-5 and GEOS-Chem), the system brings together the stand-alone component models of the Earth System, all of which are run diagnostically constrained by a multitude of other remotely sensed data. Here, we evaluate the biospheric land surface CO2 fluxes (i.e., net ecosystem exchange, NEE) as estimated from the atmospheric flux inversion. We compare against the prior bottom-up estimates (e.g., the CASA models) as well. Our evaluation dataset is the independently derived global wall-to-wall MPI-BGC product, which uses a machine learning algorithm and model tree ensemble to "scale-up" a network of in situ CO2 flux measurements from 253 globally-distributed sites in the FLUXNET network. The measurements are based on the eddy covariance method, which uses observations of co-varying fluxes of CO2 (and water and energy) from instruments on towers extending above ecosystem canopies; the towers integrate fluxes over large spatial areas (~1 km2). We present global maps of CO2 fluxes and differences between products, summaries of fluxes by TRANSCOM region, country, latitude, and biome type, and assess the time series, including timing of minimum and maximum fluxes. This evaluation shows both where the CMS is performing well, and where improvements should be directed in further work.

Surface renewal analysis for estimating turbulent surface fluxes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Castellvi, F.

2009-01-01

A decade ago, the need for a long-term surface monitoring was recognized to better understand the soil-vegetation-atmosphere scalar exchange and interaction processes. the AmeriFlux concept emerged in the IGBP workshop (La Thuile, IT, 1995). Continuous acquisition of surface fluxes for different species such as temperature, water vapour, CO x , halocarbon, ozone, etc.,) and momentum allows determination of the influence of local (canopy) exchanges, fossil fuel emission, large-scale biotic exchange on ambient concentrations which are crucial to take decisions for protecting natural environments and water resources, to develop new perspective for modern agriculture and forest management and to better understand the global climate change. (Author)

Going beyond the stationary flux towers to assess the interactions of land use and climate

Science.gov (United States)

Yakir, Dan; Rohatyn, shani; Ramati, Efrat; Tatrinov, Fedor; Rotenberg, Eyal

2017-04-01

Networks of permanent, stationary flux towers that allows continuous canopy-scale measurements over annual time-scales have revolutionized the study of the contemporary carbon cycle over the past two decades. However, this approach is limited in addressing questions related to dynamic changes in land use, vegetation types, disturbance, and their interactions with variations in environmental conditions. Using mobile laboratory for measuring CO2, water, energy, COS, and VOC fluxes, permitted us to extend our stationary flux tower measurements across many sites, but also limited measurements to short-time campaigns (days to weeks). To overcome this limitation, we adopted an empirical approach (often used in remote sensing) and used state of the art campaign-based ecosystem flux measurements to 'calibrate' local meteorological data available on continuous basis, to estimate annual-scale carbon, water, and energy budgets. Using this approach, we investigated the interactions of land use change (afforestation) and climate (humid Mediterranean to semi-arid, 730 to 300 mm in annual precipitation) on the ecosystem fluxes. The results showed that across this climatic range, afforestation increased ET markedly more in the wet (+200 mm yr-1 or 30% of P) than in the dry end (+58 mm yr-1 or 19% of P). Similarly, increase in carbon sequestration (NEE) associated with forestation was greater in the wet sites (+460 gC m-2 yr-1) than in the dry sites (+30 gC m-2 yr-1). In contrast, ecosystem net-radiation (Rn) and sensible heat flux (H) increased due to afforestation much more in the dry sites than in the wet sites ( 47 vs. 27 and 49 vs. 17 Wm-2, respectively). COS and VOC fluxes were also measured but reported separately. The results provided quantitative assessment of shifts in the tradeoffs associated with afforestation in this region, between the hydrological and energy-budget 'costs', vs. carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services, (e.g, surface cooling, erosion

Diurnal Cycles of High Resolution Land Surface Temperatures (LSTs) Determined from UAV Platforms Across a Range of Surface Types

Science.gov (United States)

McCabe, M.; Rosas Aguilar, J.; Parkes, S. D.; Aragon, B.

2017-12-01

Observation of land surface temperature (LST) has many practical uses, from studying boundary layer dynamics and land-atmosphere coupling, to investigating surface properties such as soil moisture status, heat stress and surface heat fluxes. Typically, LST is observed via satellite based sensors such as LandSat or via point measurements using IR radiometers. These measurements provide either good spatial coverage and resolution or good temporal coverage. However, neither are able to provide the needed spatial and temporal resolution for many of the research applications described above. Technological developments in the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), together with small thermal frame cameras, has enabled a capacity to overcome this spatiotemporal constraint. Utilising UAV platforms to collect LST measurements across diurnal cycles provides an opportunity to study how meteorological and surface properties vary in both space and time. Here we describe the collection of LST data from a multi-rotor UAV across a study domain that is observed multiple times throughout the day. Flights over crops of Rhodes grass and alfalfa, along with a bare desert surface, were repeated with between 8 and 11 surveys covering the period from early morning to sunset. Analysis of the collected thermal imagery shows that the constructed LST maps illustrate a strong diurnal cycle consistent with expected trends, but with considerable spatial and temporal variability observed within and between the different domains. These results offer new insights into the dynamics of land surface behavior in both dry and wet soil conditions and at spatiotemporal scales that are unable to be replicated using traditional satellite platforms.

Surface Flux Measurements at King Sejong Station in West Antarctica

Science.gov (United States)

Choi, T.; Lee, B.; Lee, H.; Shim, J.

2004-12-01

The Antarctic Peninsula is important in terms of global warming research due to pronounced increase of air temperature over the last century. The first eddy covariance system was established and turbulent fluxes of heat, water vapor, CO2 and momentum have been measured at King Sejong Station (62 \\deg 13øØS, 58 \\deg 47øØW) located in the northern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula since December in 2002. Our objectives are to better understand the interactions between the Antarctic land surface and the atmosphere and to test the feasibility of the long-term operation of eddy covariance system under extreme weather conditions. Various lichens cover the study area and the dominant species is Usnea fasciata-Himantormia. Based on the analyses on turbulent statistics such as integral turbulence characteristics of vertical velocity (w) and heat (T), stationarity test and investigation of correlation coefficient, they follow the Monin-Obukhov similarity and eddy covariance flux data were reliable. About 50 % of total retrieved sensible heat flux data could be used for further analysis. We will report on seasonal variations of energy and mass fluxes and environmental variables. In addition, factors controlling these fluxes will be presented. Acknowledgement: This study was supported by ¡rEnvironmental Monitoring on Human Impacts at the King Sejong Station, Antarctica¡_ (Project PP04102 of Korea Polar Research Institute) and ¡rEco-technopia 21 project¡_ (Ministry of Environment of Korea).

Coupled atmosphere and land-surface assimilation of surface observations with a single column model and ensemble data assimilation

Science.gov (United States)

Rostkier-Edelstein, Dorita; Hacker, Joshua P.; Snyder, Chris

2014-05-01

types of one-week long numerical experiments are performed: (a) free ensemble runs; (b) ensemble assimilation that directly impacts the atmospheric-state vector only; (c) ensemble assimilation that directly impacts the coupled atmospheric-LS-state vector. The WRF-SCM is run in two modes: with and without inclusion of externally imposed horizontal advection terms in the atmospheric column (derived from the NARR, too). Preliminary examination of analyses and 30-min forecasts of reference height temperature and moisture, soil temperature and moisture at four depths (0.05m, 0.25m, 0.7m and 1.5m), fluxes at the surface, and planetary boundary layer (PBL) height shows that: 1. Horizontal advection is important to the realism of PBL heights and fluxes in the "truth", and affects the depth of influence of the assimilation on the soil state; a deeper effect (that could be non-realistic) is more often observed when advection is not included. 2. Inclusion of soil variables in the state vector can be beneficial to estimates of soil temperature and moisture,of moisture- and net latent heat fluxes at the surface, and of atmospheric variables (for the latter especially when no advection is included), However, no benefit is observed on PBL heights. Further analysis and improvement of the WRF-SCM/DART system (in particular the treatment of advection) is under way.

Improving the Fit of a Land-Surface Model to Data Using its Adjoint

Science.gov (United States)

Raoult, N.; Jupp, T. E.; Cox, P. M.; Luke, C.

2015-12-01

Land-surface models (LSMs) are of growing importance in the world of climate prediction. They are crucial components of larger Earth system models that are aimed at understanding the effects of land surface processes on the global carbon cycle. The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) is the land-surface model used by the UK Met Office. It has been automatically differentiated using commercial software from FastOpt, resulting in an analytical gradient, or 'adjoint', of the model. Using this adjoint, the adJULES parameter estimation system has been developed, to search for locally optimum parameter sets by calibrating against observations. adJULES presents an opportunity to confront JULES with many different observations, and make improvements to the model parameterisation. In the newest version of adJULES, multiple sites can be used in the calibration, to giving a generic set of parameters that can be generalised over plant functional types. We present an introduction to the adJULES system and its applications to data from a variety of flux tower sites. We show that calculation of the 2nd derivative of JULES allows us to produce posterior probability density functions of the parameters and how knowledge of parameter values is constrained by observations.

Land Surface Phenology from MODIS: Characterization of the Collection 5 Global Land Cover Dynamics Product

Science.gov (United States)

Ganguly, Sangram; Friedl, Mark A.; Tan, Bin; Zhang, Xiaoyang; Verma, Manish

2010-01-01

Information related to land surface phenology is important for a variety of applications. For example, phenology is widely used as a diagnostic of ecosystem response to global change. In addition, phenology influences seasonal scale fluxes of water, energy, and carbon between the land surface and atmosphere. Increasingly, the importance of phenology for studies of habitat and biodiversity is also being recognized. While many data sets related to plant phenology have been collected at specific sites or in networks focused on individual plants or plant species, remote sensing provides the only way to observe and monitor phenology over large scales and at regular intervals. The MODIS Global Land Cover Dynamics Product was developed to support investigations that require regional to global scale information related to spatiotemporal dynamics in land surface phenology. Here we describe the Collection 5 version of this product, which represents a substantial refinement relative to the Collection 4 product. This new version provides information related to land surface phenology at higher spatial resolution than Collection 4 (500-m vs. 1-km), and is based on 8-day instead of 16-day input data. The paper presents a brief overview of the algorithm, followed by an assessment of the product. To this end, we present (1) a comparison of results from Collection 5 versus Collection 4 for selected MODIS tiles that span a range of climate and ecological conditions, (2) a characterization of interannual variation in Collections 4 and 5 data for North America from 2001 to 2006, and (3) a comparison of Collection 5 results against ground observations for two forest sites in the northeastern United States. Results show that the Collection 5 product is qualitatively similar to Collection 4. However, Collection 5 has fewer missing values outside of regions with persistent cloud cover and atmospheric aerosols. Interannual variability in Collection 5 is consistent with expected ranges of

Simulating carbon exchange using a regional atmospheric model coupled to an advanced land-surface model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

H. W. Ter Maat

2010-08-01

Full Text Available This paper is a case study to investigate what the main controlling factors are that determine atmospheric carbon dioxide content for a region in the centre of The Netherlands. We use the Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS, coupled with a land surface scheme simulating carbon, heat and momentum fluxes (SWAPS-C, and including also submodels for urban and marine fluxes, which in principle should include the dominant mechanisms and should be able to capture the relevant dynamics of the system. To validate the model, observations are used that were taken during an intensive observational campaign in central Netherlands in summer 2002. These include flux-tower observations and aircraft observations of vertical profiles and spatial fluxes of various variables.

The simulations performed with the coupled regional model (RAMS-SWAPS-C are in good qualitative agreement with the observations. The station validation of the model demonstrates that the incoming shortwave radiation and surface fluxes of water and CO₂ are well simulated. The comparison against aircraft data shows that the regional meteorology (i.e. wind, temperature is captured well by the model. Comparing spatially explicitly simulated fluxes with aircraft observed fluxes we conclude that in general latent heat fluxes are underestimated by the model compared to the observations but that the latter exhibit large variability within all flights. Sensitivity experiments demonstrate the relevance of the urban emissions of carbon dioxide for the carbon balance in this particular region. The same tests also show the relation between uncertainties in surface fluxes and those in atmospheric concentrations.

Comparison of GCM subgrid fluxes calculated using BATS and SiB schemes with a coupled land-atmosphere high-resolution model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Shen, Jinmei; Arritt, R.W. [Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)

1996-12-31

The importance of land-atmosphere interactions and biosphere in climate change studies has long been recognized, and several land-atmosphere interaction schemes have been developed. Among these, the Simple Biosphere scheme (SiB) of Sellers et al. and the Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) of Dickinson et al. are two of the most widely known. The effects of GCM subgrid-scale inhomogeneities of surface properties in general circulation models also has received increasing attention in recent years. However, due to the complexity of land surface processes and the difficulty to prescribe the large number of parameters that determine atmospheric and soil interactions with vegetation, many previous studies and results seem to be contradictory. A GCM grid element typically represents an area of 10{sup 4}-10{sup 6} km{sup 2}. Within such an area, there exist variations of soil type, soil wetness, vegetation type, vegetation density and topography, as well as urban areas and water bodies. In this paper, we incorporate both BATS and SiB2 land surface process schemes into a nonhydrostatic, compressible version of AMBLE model (Atmospheric Model -- Boundary-Layer Emphasis), and compare the surface heat fluxes and mesoscale circulations calculated using the two schemes. 8 refs., 5 figs.

A comparison of optical and microwave scintillometers with eddy covariance derived surface heat fluxes

KAUST Repository

Yee, Mei Sun

2015-11-01

Accurate measurements of energy fluxes between land and atmosphere are important for understanding and modeling climatic patterns. Several methods are available to measure heat fluxes, and scintillometers are becoming increasingly popular because of their ability to measure sensible (. H) and latent (. LvE) heat fluxes over large spatial scales. The main motivation of this study was to test the use of different methods and technologies to derive surface heat fluxes.Measurements of H and LvE were carried out with an eddy covariance (EC) system, two different makes of optical large aperture scintillometers (LAS) and two microwave scintillometers (MWS) with different frequencies at a pasture site in a semi-arid environment of New South Wales, Australia. We used the EC measurements as a benchmark. Fluxes derived from the EC system and LAS systems agreed (R2>0.94), whereas the MWS systems measured lower H (bias ~60Wm-2) and larger LvE (bias ~65Wm-2) than EC. When the scintillometers were compared against each other, the two LASs showed good agreement of H (R2=0.98), while MWS with different frequencies and polarizations led to different results. Combination of LAS and MWS measurements (i.e., two wavelength method) resulted in performance that fell in between those estimated using either LAS or MWS alone when compared with the EC system. The cause for discrepancies between surface heat fluxes derived from the EC system and those from the MWS systems and the two-wavelength method are possibly related to inaccurate assignment of the structure parameter of temperature and humidity. Additionally, measurements from MWSs can be associated with two values of the Bowen ratio, thereby leading to uncertainties in the estimation of the fluxes. While only one solution has been considered in this study, when LvE was approximately less than 200Wm-2, the alternate solution may be more accurate. Therefore, for measurements of surface heat fluxes in a semi-arid or dry environment, the

Changing Land Use from Cotton to Bioenergy Crops in the Southern Great Plains: Implications on Carbon and Water Vapor Fluxes

Science.gov (United States)

Rajan, N.; Sharma, S.

2016-12-01

We are facing an unprecedented challenge in securing America's energy future. To address this challenge, increased biofuel crop production is needed. Although first-generation biofuels like corn ethanol are available, second-generation biofuels are gaining importance because they don't directly compete with food production. Second-generation biofuels are made from the by-products of intensive agriculture or from less-intensive agriculture on more marginal lands. The Southwestern U.S. Cotton Belt can play a significant role in this effort through a change from more conventional crops (like continuous cotton) to second-generation biofuel feedstocks (biomass sorghum and perennial grasses). While we believe there would be environmental benefits associated with this change in land use, their exact nature and magnitude have not been investigated for this region. The overall goal of the proposed study was to investigate the water and carbon (C) fluxes associated with the change in agricultural land use to biofuels-dominated cropping systems in the semi-arid Southwestern U.S. Cotton Belt region. Eddy covariance flux towers were established at selected producer fields (cotton, perennial grasses and biomass sorghum) in the Southern Great Plains region. The fluxes of carbon dioxide, water vapor and sensible heat between the surface and the atmosphere will be measured throughout the year. The results have demonstrated that the dynamics of C and water vapor fluxes for these agroecosystems were strongly affected by environmental variables, management factors, and crop phenology. Detailed results will be presented at the meeting.

Development of computational technique for labeling magnetic flux-surfaces

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nunami, Masanori; Kanno, Ryutaro; Satake, Shinsuke; Hayashi, Takaya; Takamaru, Hisanori

2006-03-01

In recent Large Helical Device (LHD) experiments, radial profiles of ion temperature, electric field, etc. are measured in the m/n=1/1 magnetic island produced by island control coils, where m is the poloidal mode number and n the toroidal mode number. When the transport of the plasma in the radial profiles is numerically analyzed, an average over a magnetic flux-surface in the island is a very useful concept to understand the transport. On averaging, a proper labeling of the flux-surfaces is necessary. In general, it is not easy to label the flux-surfaces in the magnetic field with the island, compared with the case of a magnetic field configuration having nested flux-surfaces. In the present paper, we have developed a new computational technique to label the magnetic flux-surfaces. This technique is constructed by using an optimization algorithm, which is known as an optimization method called the simulated annealing method. The flux-surfaces are discerned by using two labels: one is classification of the magnetic field structure, i.e., core, island, ergodic, and outside regions, and the other is a value of the toroidal magnetic flux. We have applied the technique to an LHD configuration with the m/n=1/1 island, and successfully obtained the discrimination of the magnetic field structure. (author)

Landscape-scale soil moisture heterogeneity and its influence on surface fluxes at the Jornada LTER site: Evaluating a new model parameterization for subgrid-scale soil moisture variability

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, I. T.; Prihodko, L.; Vivoni, E. R.; Denning, A. S.

2017-12-01

Arid and semiarid regions represent a large fraction of global land, with attendant importance of surface energy and trace gas flux to global totals. These regions are characterized by strong seasonality, especially in precipitation, that defines the level of ecosystem stress. Individual plants have been observed to respond non-linearly to increasing soil moisture stress, where plant function is generally maintained as soils dry down to a threshold at which rapid closure of stomates occurs. Incorporating this nonlinear mechanism into landscape-scale models can result in unrealistic binary "on-off" behavior that is especially problematic in arid landscapes. Subsequently, models have `relaxed' their simulation of soil moisture stress on evapotranspiration (ET). Unfortunately, these relaxations are not physically based, but are imposed upon model physics as a means to force a more realistic response. Previously, we have introduced a new method to represent soil moisture regulation of ET, whereby the landscape is partitioned into `BINS' of soil moisture wetness, each associated with a fractional area of the landscape or grid cell. A physically- and observationally-based nonlinear soil moisture stress function is applied, but when convolved with the relative area distribution represented by wetness BINS the system has the emergent property of `smoothing' the landscape-scale response without the need for non-physical impositions on model physics. In this research we confront BINS simulations of Bowen ratio, soil moisture variability and trace gas flux with soil moisture and eddy covariance observations taken at the Jornada LTER dryland site in southern New Mexico. We calculate the mean annual wetting cycle and associated variability about the mean state and evaluate model performance against this variability and time series of land surface fluxes from the highly instrumented Tromble Weir watershed. The BINS simulations capture the relatively rapid reaction to wetting

Deriving global parameter estimates for the Noah land surface model using FLUXNET and machine learning

Science.gov (United States)

Chaney, Nathaniel W.; Herman, Jonathan D.; Ek, Michael B.; Wood, Eric F.

2016-11-01

With their origins in numerical weather prediction and climate modeling, land surface models aim to accurately partition the surface energy balance. An overlooked challenge in these schemes is the role of model parameter uncertainty, particularly at unmonitored sites. This study provides global parameter estimates for the Noah land surface model using 85 eddy covariance sites in the global FLUXNET network. The at-site parameters are first calibrated using a Latin Hypercube-based ensemble of the most sensitive parameters, determined by the Sobol method, to be the minimum stomatal resistance (rs,min), the Zilitinkevich empirical constant (Czil), and the bare soil evaporation exponent (fxexp). Calibration leads to an increase in the mean Kling-Gupta Efficiency performance metric from 0.54 to 0.71. These calibrated parameter sets are then related to local environmental characteristics using the Extra-Trees machine learning algorithm. The fitted Extra-Trees model is used to map the optimal parameter sets over the globe at a 5 km spatial resolution. The leave-one-out cross validation of the mapped parameters using the Noah land surface model suggests that there is the potential to skillfully relate calibrated model parameter sets to local environmental characteristics. The results demonstrate the potential to use FLUXNET to tune the parameterizations of surface fluxes in land surface models and to provide improved parameter estimates over the globe.

CYGNSS Surface Wind Observations and Surface Flux Estimates within Low-Latitude Extratropical Cyclones

Science.gov (United States)

Crespo, J.; Posselt, D. J.

2017-12-01

The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), launched in December 2016, aims to improve estimates of surface wind speeds over the tropical oceans. While CYGNSS's core mission is to provide better estimates of surface winds within the core of tropical cyclones, previous research has shown that the constellation, with its orbital inclination of 35°, also has the ability to observe numerous extratropical cyclones that form in the lower latitudes. Along with its high spatial and temporal resolution, CYGNSS can provide new insights into how extratropical cyclones develop and evolve, especially in the presence of thick clouds and precipitation. We will demonstrate this by presenting case studies of multiple extratropical cyclones observed by CYGNSS early on in its mission in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres. By using the improved estimates of surface wind speeds from CYGNSS, we can obtain better estimates of surface latent and sensible heat fluxes within and around extratropical cyclones. Surface heat fluxes, driven by surface winds and strong vertical gradients of water vapor and temperature, play a key role in marine cyclogenesis as they increase instability within the boundary layer and may contribute to extreme marine cyclogenesis. In the past, it has been difficult to estimate surface heat fluxes from space borne instruments, as these fluxes cannot be observed directly from space, and deficiencies in spatial coverage and attenuation from clouds and precipitation lead to inaccurate estimates of surface flux components, such as surface wind speeds. While CYGNSS only contributes estimates of surface wind speeds, we can combine this data with other reanalysis and satellite data to provide improved estimates of surface sensible and latent heat fluxes within and around extratropical cyclones and throughout the entire CYGNSS mission.

Response of surface air temperature to small-scale land clearing across latitudes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang, Mi; Wang, Wei; Lee, Xuhui; Yu, Guirui; Wang, Huimin; Han, Shijie; Yan, Junhua; Zhang, Yiping; Li, Yide; Ohta, Takeshi; Hirano, Takashi; Kim, Joon; Yoshifuji, Natsuko

2014-01-01

Climate models simulating continental scale deforestation suggest a warming effect of land clearing on the surface air temperature in the tropical zone and a cooling effect in the boreal zone due to different control of biogeochemical and biophysical processes. Ongoing land-use/cover changes mostly occur at local scales (hectares), and it is not clear whether the local-scale deforestation will generate temperature patterns consistent with the climate model results. Here we paired 40 and 12 flux sites with nearby weather stations in North and South America and in Eastern Asia, respectively, and quantified the temperature difference between these paired sites. Our goal was to investigate the response of the surface air temperature to local-scale (hectares) land clearing across latitudes using the surface weather stations as proxies for localized land clearing. The results show that north of 10°N, the annual mean temperature difference (open land minus forest) decreases with increasing latitude, but the temperature difference shrinks with latitude at a faster rate in the Americas [−0.079 (±0.010) °C per degree] than in Asia [−0.046 (±0.011) °C per degree]. Regression of the combined data suggests a transitional latitude of about 35.5°N that demarks deforestation warming to the south and cooling to the north. The warming in latitudes south of 35°N is associated with increase in the daily maximum temperature, with little change in the daily minimum temperature while the reverse is true in the boreal latitudes. (paper)

Land use and rainfall effect on soil CO2 fluxes in a Mediterranean agroforestry system

Science.gov (United States)

Quijano, Laura; Álvaro-Fuentes, Jorge; Lizaga, Iván; Navas, Ana

2017-04-01

(60.8 mg CO2-C m-2 h-1) than before (65.4 mg CO2-C m-2 h-1). The mean of topsoil water content before rainfall events was 19.7% and after was 28.9%. Soil CO2 fluxes increased on the following days after the rainfall event as the soil dried out but with lower emissions just after the events. This pattern was attributed to the control of soil moisture on microbial activity that affects CO2 production via soil respiration. CO2 measurements from soil surface are useful to evaluate the potential for soil respiration and soil carbon dioxide production capacity under different land use and environmental conditions for a better understanding of C cycling.

Seasonal effects of irrigation on land-atmosphere latent heat, sensible heat and carbon fluxes in semi-arid basin

Science.gov (United States)

Xie, Zhenghui; Zeng, Yujin

2017-04-01

Irrigation, which constitutes 70% of the total amount of fresh water consumed by the human population, is significantly impacting the land-atmosphere fluxes. In this study, using the improved Community Land Model version 4.5 (CLM 4.5) with an active crop model, two high resolution ( 1 km) simulations investigating the effects of irrigation on Latent Heat (LH), Sensible Heat (SH) and Carbon Fluxes (or net ecosystem exchange, NEE) from land to atmosphere on the Heihe River Basin in northwestern China were conducted using a high-quality irrigation dataset compiled from 1981 to 2013. The model output and measurements from remote sensing demonstrated the capacity and viability of the developed models to reproduce ecological and hydrological processes. The results revealed the effects of irrigation on LH and SH are strongest during summer with a LH increase of 100 W/m2 and a SH decrease of 60 W/m2 over intensely irrigated areas. However, the reactions are much weaker during spring and autumn when there is much less irrigation. When the irrigation rate below 5 mm/day, the LH generally increases, whereas the SH decreases with growing irrigation rates. However, when the irrigation threshold is in excess of 5 mm/day, there is no accrued effect of irrigation on the LH and SH. Irrigation produces opposite effects to the NEE during spring and summer. During the spring, irrigation yields more discharged carbon from the land to the atmosphere, increasing the NEE value by 0.4-0.8 gC/m2/day, while the summer irrigation favors crop fixing of carbon from atmospheric CO2, decreasing the NEE value by 0.8 gC/m2/day. The repercussions of irrigation on land-atmosphere fluxes are not solely linked to the irrigation amount, and other parameters (especially the temperature) also control the effects of irrigation on LH, SH and NEE. The study indicates that how a land surface model with high spatial resolution can represent crop growing and its effects over basin scale.

Modeling energy fluxes in heterogeneous landscapes employing a mosaic approach

Science.gov (United States)

Klein, Christian; Thieme, Christoph; Priesack, Eckart

2015-04-01

Recent studies show that uncertainties in regional and global climate and weather simulations are partly due to inadequate descriptions of the energy flux exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere. One major shortcoming is the limitation of the grid-cell resolution, which is recommended to be about at least 3x3 km² in most models due to limitations in the model physics. To represent each individual grid cell most models select one dominant soil type and one dominant land use type. This resolution, however, is often too coarse in regions where the spatial diversity of soil and land use types are high, e.g. in Central Europe. An elegant method to avoid the shortcoming of grid cell resolution is the so called mosaic approach. This approach is part of the recently developed ecosystem model framework Expert-N 5.0. The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of the characteristics of two managed fields, planted with winter wheat and potato, on the near surface soil moistures and on the near surface energy flux exchanges of the soil-plant-atmosphere interface. The simulated energy fluxes were compared with eddy flux tower measurements between the respective fields at the research farm Scheyern, North-West of Munich, Germany. To perform these simulations, we coupled the ecosystem model Expert-N 5.0 to an analytical footprint model. The coupled model system has the ability to calculate the mixing ratio of the surface energy fluxes at a given point within one grid cell (in this case at the flux tower between the two fields). This approach accounts for the differences of the two soil types, of land use managements, and of canopy properties due to footprint size dynamics. Our preliminary simulation results show that a mosaic approach can improve modeling and analyzing energy fluxes when the land surface is heterogeneous. In this case our applied method is a promising approach to extend weather and climate models on the regional and on the global scale.

THE EFFECT OF LAND USE CHANGE ON LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE IN THE NETHERLANDS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Youneszadeh

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The Netherlands is a small country with a relatively large population which experienced a rapid rate of land use changes from 2000 to 2008 years due to the industrialization and population increase. Land use change is especially related to the urban expansion and open agriculture reduction due to the enhanced economic growth. This research reports an investigation into the application of remote sensing and geographical information system (GIS in combination with statistical methods to provide a quantitative information on the effect of land use change on the land surface temperature. In this study, remote sensing techniques were used to retrieve the land surface temperature (LST by using the MODIS Terra (MOD11A2 Satellite imagery product. As land use change alters the thermal environment, the land surface temperature (LST could be a proper change indicator to show the thermal changes in relation with land use changes. The Geographical information system was further applied to extract the mean yearly land surface temperature (LST for each land use type and each province in the 2003, 2006 and 2008 years, by using the zonal statistic techniques. The results show that, the inland water and offshore area has the highest night land surface temperature (LST. Furthermore, the Zued (South-Holland province has the highest night LST value in the 2003, 2006 and 2008 years. The result of this research will be helpful tool for urban planners and environmental scientists by providing the critical information about the land surface temperature.

Improving the representation of river-groundwater interactions in land surface modeling at the regional scale: Observational evidence and parameterization applied in the Community Land Model

KAUST Repository

Zampieri, Matteo

2012-02-01

Groundwater is an important component of the hydrological cycle, included in many land surface models to provide a lower boundary condition for soil moisture, which in turn plays a key role in the land-vegetation-atmosphere interactions and the ecosystem dynamics. In regional-scale climate applications land surface models (LSMs) are commonly coupled to atmospheric models to close the surface energy, mass and carbon balance. LSMs in these applications are used to resolve the momentum, heat, water and carbon vertical fluxes, accounting for the effect of vegetation, soil type and other surface parameters, while lack of adequate resolution prevents using them to resolve horizontal sub-grid processes. Specifically, LSMs resolve the large-scale runoff production associated with infiltration excess and sub-grid groundwater convergence, but they neglect the effect from loosing streams to groundwater. Through the analysis of observed data of soil moisture obtained from the Oklahoma Mesoscale Network stations and land surface temperature derived from MODIS we provide evidence that the regional scale soil moisture and surface temperature patterns are affected by the rivers. This is demonstrated on the basis of simulations from a land surface model (i.e., Community Land Model - CLM, version 3.5). We show that the model cannot reproduce the features of the observed soil moisture and temperature spatial patterns that are related to the underlying mechanism of reinfiltration of river water to groundwater. Therefore, we implement a simple parameterization of this process in CLM showing the ability to reproduce the soil moisture and surface temperature spatial variabilities that relate to the river distribution at regional scale. The CLM with this new parameterization is used to evaluate impacts of the improved representation of river-groundwater interactions on the simulated water cycle parameters and the surface energy budget at the regional scale. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Estimating the impact of land use change on surface energy partition based on the Noah model

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Shaohui; Su, Hongbo; Zhan, Jinyan

2014-03-01

It is well known that land use has an important impact on surface energy partition. It is important to study the evolving trend of the partition of sensible heat flux (SHF) and latent heat flux (LHF) from the net radiance (NR) with land use change in the context of regional climate changes. In this paper, we studied the response of energy partition to land use using the Noah model. First, the Noah model simulation results of SHF and LHF between 2003 and 2005 were comprehensively validated using the observation data from the Changbai Mountain Station, the Xilinhot Station, and the Yucheng Station. The study domains represent three different types of land use change: excessive deforestation, grassland degeneration aggravation, and groundwater level decline, respectively. The study period was subsequently extended from 2015 through 2034, using four projected land use maps and forcing data from Princeton (2000-2004). The simulation results show that during the land use conversions, the annual average of LHF drops by 10.7%, rises by 10.1%, and drops by 11.5% for the Changbai Mountain, Inner Mongolia, and Northern China stations, respectively while the annual average of SHF rises by 10.6%, drops by 10.1%, and drops by 11.3% for the three areas.

Integrating satellite retrieved leaf chlorophyll into land surface models for constraining simulations of water and carbon fluxes

KAUST Repository

Houborg, Rasmus; Cescatti, Alessandro; Gitelson, Anatoly A.

2013-01-01

variability exists. Satellite remote sensing can support modeling efforts by offering distributed information on important land surface characteristics, which would be very difficult to obtain otherwise. This study investigates the utility of satellite based

Improved representations of coupled soil-canopy processes in the CABLE land surface model (Subversion revision 3432)

Science.gov (United States)

Haverd, Vanessa; Cuntz, Matthias; Nieradzik, Lars P.; Harman, Ian N.

2016-09-01

CABLE is a global land surface model, which has been used extensively in offline and coupled simulations. While CABLE performs well in comparison with other land surface models, results are impacted by decoupling of transpiration and photosynthesis fluxes under drying soil conditions, often leading to implausibly high water use efficiencies. Here, we present a solution to this problem, ensuring that modelled transpiration is always consistent with modelled photosynthesis, while introducing a parsimonious single-parameter drought response function which is coupled to root water uptake. We further improve CABLE's simulation of coupled soil-canopy processes by introducing an alternative hydrology model with a physically accurate representation of coupled energy and water fluxes at the soil-air interface, including a more realistic formulation of transfer under atmospherically stable conditions within the canopy and in the presence of leaf litter. The effects of these model developments are assessed using data from 18 stations from the global eddy covariance FLUXNET database, selected to span a large climatic range. Marked improvements are demonstrated, with root mean squared errors for monthly latent heat fluxes and water use efficiencies being reduced by 40 %. Results highlight the important roles of deep soil moisture in mediating drought response and litter in dampening soil evaporation.

INDICATION OF INSENSITIVITY OF PLANETARY WEATHERING BEHAVIOR AND HABITABLE ZONE TO SURFACE LAND FRACTION

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Abbot, Dorian S.; Ciesla, Fred J.; Cowan, Nicolas B.

2012-01-01

It is likely that unambiguous habitable zone terrestrial planets of unknown water content will soon be discovered. Water content helps determine surface land fraction, which influences planetary weathering behavior. This is important because the silicate-weathering feedback determines the width of the habitable zone in space and time. Here a low-order model of weathering and climate, useful for gaining qualitative understanding, is developed to examine climate evolution for planets of various land-ocean fractions. It is pointed out that, if seafloor weathering does not depend directly on surface temperature, there can be no weathering-climate feedback on a waterworld. This would dramatically narrow the habitable zone of a waterworld. Results from our model indicate that weathering behavior does not depend strongly on land fraction for partially ocean-covered planets. This is powerful because it suggests that previous habitable zone theory is robust to changes in land fraction, as long as there is some land. Finally, a mechanism is proposed for a waterworld to prevent complete water loss during a moist greenhouse through rapid weathering of exposed continents. This process is named a 'waterworld self-arrest', and it implies that waterworlds can go through a moist greenhouse stage and end up as planets like Earth with partial ocean coverage. This work stresses the importance of surface and geologic effects, in addition to the usual incident stellar flux, for habitability.

INDICATION OF INSENSITIVITY OF PLANETARY WEATHERING BEHAVIOR AND HABITABLE ZONE TO SURFACE LAND FRACTION

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Abbot, Dorian S.; Ciesla, Fred J. [Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States); Cowan, Nicolas B., E-mail: abbot@uchicago.edu [Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, 2131 Tech Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 (United States)

2012-09-10

It is likely that unambiguous habitable zone terrestrial planets of unknown water content will soon be discovered. Water content helps determine surface land fraction, which influences planetary weathering behavior. This is important because the silicate-weathering feedback determines the width of the habitable zone in space and time. Here a low-order model of weathering and climate, useful for gaining qualitative understanding, is developed to examine climate evolution for planets of various land-ocean fractions. It is pointed out that, if seafloor weathering does not depend directly on surface temperature, there can be no weathering-climate feedback on a waterworld. This would dramatically narrow the habitable zone of a waterworld. Results from our model indicate that weathering behavior does not depend strongly on land fraction for partially ocean-covered planets. This is powerful because it suggests that previous habitable zone theory is robust to changes in land fraction, as long as there is some land. Finally, a mechanism is proposed for a waterworld to prevent complete water loss during a moist greenhouse through rapid weathering of exposed continents. This process is named a 'waterworld self-arrest', and it implies that waterworlds can go through a moist greenhouse stage and end up as planets like Earth with partial ocean coverage. This work stresses the importance of surface and geologic effects, in addition to the usual incident stellar flux, for habitability.

Sensitivity of biogenic volatile organic compounds to land surface parameterizations and vegetation distributions in California

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhao, Chun; Huang, Maoyi; Fast, Jerome D.; Berg, Larry K.; Qian, Yun; Guenther, Alex; Gu, Dasa; Shrivastava, Manish; Liu, Ying; Walters, Stacy; Pfister, Gabriele; Jin, Jiming; Shilling, John E.; Warneke, Carsten

2016-01-01

Current climate models still have large uncertainties in estimating biogenic trace gases, which can significantly affect atmospheric chemistry and secondary aerosol formation that ultimately influences air quality and aerosol radiative forcing. These uncertainties result from many factors, including uncertainties in land surface processes and specification of vegetation types, both of which can affect the simulated near-surface fluxes of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). In this study, the latest version of Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN v2.1) is coupled within the land surface scheme CLM4 (Community Land Model version 4.0) in the Weather Research and Forecasting model with chemistry (WRF-Chem). In this implementation, MEGAN v2.1 shares a consistent vegetation map with CLM4 for estimating BVOC emissions. This is unlike MEGAN v2.0 in the public version of WRF-Chem that uses a stand-alone vegetation map that differs from what is used by land surface schemes. This improved modeling framework is used to investigate the impact of two land surface schemes, CLM4 and Noah, on BVOCs and examine the sensitivity of BVOCs to vegetation distributions in California. The measurements collected during the Carbonaceous Aerosol and Radiative Effects Study (CARES) and the California Nexus of Air Quality and Climate Experiment (CalNex) conducted in June of 2010 provided an opportunity to evaluate the simulated BVOCs. Sensitivity experiments show that land surface schemes do influence the simulated BVOCs, but the impact is much smaller than that of vegetation distributions. This study indicates that more effort is needed to obtain the most appropriate and accurate land cover data sets for climate and air quality models in terms of simulating BVOCs, oxidant chemistry and, consequently, secondary organic aerosol formation.

Experimental use of Land Surface Models in the La Plata Basin

Science.gov (United States)

Goncalves, L.; de Mattos, J. Z.; Sapucci, L. F.; Herdies, D. L.; Berbery, E. H.

2009-12-01

Soil moisture is a key variable that controls the partitioning between sensible and latent heat flux, and under favorable conditions, it can modulate precipitation. The overlying boundary layer can be affected by soil moisture anomalies when persisting for an enough period of time. Several studies have shown the influence of surface processes in the South American atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns. However the absence of a comprehensive observation network over that region represents a disadvantage for determining and quantifying memory and coupling between the land surface and the atmosphere. The La Plata Basin (LPB) in southeastern South America is recognized as an area of great importance for the economic and social development of several countries. Vast areas of this basin have experienced changes in land cover conditions due to the expansion of the agriculture (replacing natural vegetation), but also due to changes in crop types. This work presents results from an ensemble of four land surface models (Noah, CLM, MOSAIC and SiB2) used for climatic characterization of the past 30 years of soil moisture and temperature over the LPB. The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), from NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) was downscaled to be used to force the land surface models at 10Km, 3-hourly resolutions. Two sets of runs were made for this study: first, the LSMs were forced using reanalysis data to characterize the climatological states at coarse resolution, and second, the models were run using South American LDAS forcing fields from 2000 until present at higher resolution. The resulting spread among the different models was used as a measure of uncertainty in the initial states. In particular, the surface states derived from the Noah model were rescaled and used as initial conditions for atmospheric model simulations using the coupled ETA/Noah models. The control run was performed using

Hydrologic Remote Sensing and Land Surface Data Assimilation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hamid Moradkhani

2008-05-01

Full Text Available Accurate, reliable and skillful forecasting of key environmental variables such as soil moisture and snow are of paramount importance due to their strong influence on many water resources applications including flood control, agricultural production and effective water resources management which collectively control the behavior of the climate system. Soil moisture is a key state variable in land surface–atmosphere interactions affecting surface energy fluxes, runoff and the radiation balance. Snow processes also have a large influence on land-atmosphere energy exchanges due to snow high albedo, low thermal conductivity and considerable spatial and temporal variability resulting in the dramatic change on surface and ground temperature. Measurement of these two variables is possible through variety of methods using ground-based and remote sensing procedures. Remote sensing, however, holds great promise for soil moisture and snow measurements which have considerable spatial and temporal variability. Merging these measurements with hydrologic model outputs in a systematic and effective way results in an improvement of land surface model prediction. Data Assimilation provides a mechanism to combine these two sources of estimation. Much success has been attained in recent years in using data from passive microwave sensors and assimilating them into the models. This paper provides an overview of the remote sensing measurement techniques for soil moisture and snow data and describes the advances in data assimilation techniques through the ensemble filtering, mainly Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF and Particle filter (PF, for improving the model prediction and reducing the uncertainties involved in prediction process. It is believed that PF provides a complete representation of the probability distribution of state variables of interests (according to sequential Bayes law and could be a strong alternative to EnKF which is subject to some

Carbon Flux to the Atmosphere from Land-Use Changes: 1850 to 1990

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Houghton, R.A.

2001-02-22

The database documented in this numeric data package, a revision to a database originally published by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) in 1995, consists of annual estimates, from 1850 through 1990, of the net flux of carbon between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere resulting from deliberate changes in land cover and land use, especially forest clearing for agriculture and the harvest of wood for wood products or energy. The data are provided on a year-by-year basis for nine regions (North America, South and Central America, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Tropical Africa, the Former Soviet Union, China, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Developed Region) and the globe. Some data begin earlier than 1850 (e.g., for six regions, areas of different ecosystems are provided for the year 1700) or extend beyond 1990 (e.g., fuelwood harvest in South and Southeast Asia, by forest type, is provided through 1995). The global net flux during the period 1850 to 1990 was 124 Pg of carbon (1 petagram = 10{sup 15} grams). During this period, the greatest regional flux was from South and Southeast Asia (39 Pg of carbon), while the smallest regional flux was from North Africa and the Middle East (3 Pg of carbon). For the year 1990, the global total net flux was estimated to be 2.1 Pg of carbon.

Estimating surface fluxes using eddy covariance and numerical ogive optimization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sievers, J.; Papakyriakou, T.; Larsen, Søren Ejling

2015-01-01

Estimating representative surface fluxes using eddy covariance leads invariably to questions concerning inclusion or exclusion of low-frequency flux contributions. For studies where fluxes are linked to local physical parameters and up-scaled through numerical modelling efforts, low-frequency con......Estimating representative surface fluxes using eddy covariance leads invariably to questions concerning inclusion or exclusion of low-frequency flux contributions. For studies where fluxes are linked to local physical parameters and up-scaled through numerical modelling efforts, low...

Spatial and temporal variability of land CO{sub 2} fluxes estimated with remote sensing and analysis data over western Eurasia

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lafont, S.; Dedieu, G. [CESBIO (CNRS/CNES/UPS), Toulouse (France); Kergoat, L. [LET (CNRS/UPS), Toulouse (France); Chevillard, A. [CEA Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette (France). Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l' Environnement; Karstens, U. [MPI-MET, Hamburg (Germany); Kolle, O. [Max-Planck Inst. for Biogeochemistry, Jena (Germany)

2002-11-01

The Eurosiberian Carbonflux project was designed to address the feasibility of inferring the regional carbon balance over Europe and Siberia from a hierarchy of models and atmospheric CO{sub 2} measurements over the continent. Such atmospheric CO{sub 2} concentrations result from the combination of connective boundary layer dynamics, synoptic events, large-scale transport of CO{sub 2}, and regional surface fluxes and depend on the variability of these processes in time and space. In this paper we investigate the spatial and temporal variability of the land surface CO{sub 2} fluxes derived from the TURC model. This productivity model is driven by satellite NDVI and forced by ECMWF or REMO meteorology. We first present an analysis of recent CO{sub 2} flux measurements over temperate and boreal forests, which are used to update the TURC model. A strong linear relationship has been found between maximum hourly CO{sub 2} fluxes and the mean annual air temperature, showing that boreal biomes have a lower photosynthetic capacity than temperate ones. Then, model input consistency and simulated CO{sub 2} flux accuracy are evaluated against local measurements from two sites in Russia. Finally, the spatial and temporal patterns of the daily CO{sub 2} fluxes over Eurasia are analysed. We show that, during the growing season (spring and summer), the daily CO{sub 2} fluxes display characteristic spatial patterns of positive and negative fluxes at the synoptic scale. These patterns are found to correspond to cloudy areas (areas with low incoming radiation) and to follow the motion of cloud cover areas over the whole domain. As a consequence, we argue that co-variations of surface CO{sub 2} fluxes and atmospheric transport at the synoptic scale may impact CO{sub 2} concentrations over continents and need to be investigated.

Neoclassical transport coefficients for tokamaks with bean-shaped flux surfaces

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chang, C.S.; Kaye, S.M.

1990-11-01

Simple analytic representations of the neoclassical transport coefficients for indented flux surfaces are presented. It is shown that a transport coefficient for an indented flux surface can be expressed in terms of a linear combination of the previously known transport coefficients for two nonindented flux surfaces. Numerical calculations based on actual equilibria from the PBX-M tokamak indicate that, even for modestly indented flux surfaces, the ion neoclassical thermal transport can be over a factor of two smaller than in a circular plasma with the same midplane radius or with the equivalent areas. 6 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab

Beyond Land-Atmosphere Interaction

KAUST Repository

Yang, Zong-Liang

2011-04-09

Traditionally, land-surface models (LSMs) provide bottom boundary conditions (or surface fluxes) for weather and climate models in the form of reflected solar radiation, upward emission of long-wave radiation, and turbulent exchanges of heat, moisture, an

Estimation of land surface temperature of Kaduna metropolis ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Estimation of land surface temperature of Kaduna metropolis, Nigeria using landsat images. Isa Zaharaddeen, Ibrahim I. Baba, Ayuba Zachariah. Abstract. Understanding the spatial variation of Land Surface Temperature (LST), will be helpful in urban micro climate studies. This study estimates the land surface temperature ...

Modelling of cadmium fluxes on energy crop land

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Palm, V.

1992-04-01

The flux of cadmium on energy crop land is investigated. Three mechanisms are accounted for; Uptake by plant, transport with water, and sorption to soil. Sorption is described with Freundlich isotherms. The system is simulated mathematically in order to estimate the sensitivity and importance of different parameters on the cadmium flow and sorption. The water flux through the soil and the uptake by plants are simulated with a hydrological model, SOIL. The simulated time period is two years. The parameters describing root distribution and evaporation due to crop are taken from measurements on energy crop (Salix). The resulting water flux, water content in the soil profile and the water uptake into roots, for each day and soil compartment, are used in the cadmium sorption simulation. In the cadmium sorption simulation the flux and equilibrium chemistry of cadmium is calculated. It is shown that the amount of cadmium that accumulates in the plant, and the depth to which the applied cadmium reaches depends strongly on the constants in the sorption isotherm. With an application of 10 mg Cd/m 2 in the given range of Freundlich equations, the simulations gave a plant uptake of between 0 and 30 % of the applied cadmium in two years. At higher concentrations, where cadmium sorption can be described by nonlinear isotherms, more cadmium is present in soil water and is generally more bioavailable. 25 refs

Sensitivity of Climate Simulations to Land-Surface and Atmospheric Boundary-Layer Treatments-A Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Garratt, J. R.

1993-03-01

realistic surface representation in general circulation models of the atmosphere. It is not yet clear how detailed this representation needs to be, but even allowing for the importance of surface processes, the parameterization of boundary-layer and convective clouds probably represents a greater challenge to improved climate simulations. This is illustrated in the case of surface net radiation for Aniazonia, which is not well simulated and tends to be overestimated, leading to evaporation rates that are too large. Underestimates in cloudiness, cloud albedo, and clear-sky shortwave absorption, rather than in surface albedo, appear to be the main culprits.There are three major tasks that confront the researcher so far as the development and validation of atmospheric boundary-layer (ABL) and surface schemes in GCMs are concerned:(i) There is a need to as' critically the impact of `improved' parameterization schemes on WM simulations, taking into account the problem of natural variability and hence the statistical significance of the induced changes.(ii) There is a need to compare GCM simulations of surface and ABL behavior (particularly regarding the diurnal cycle of surface fluxes, air temperature, and ABL depth) with observations over a range of surface types (vegetation, desert, ocean). In this context, area-average values of surface fluxes will be required to calibrate directly the ABL/land-surface scheme in the GCM.(iii) There is a need for intercomparisons of ABL and land-surface schemes used in GCMS, both for one- dimensional stand-alone models and for GCMs that incorporate the respective schemes.

The Effect of Landing Surface on the Plantar Kinetics of Chinese Paratroopers Using Half-Squat Landing

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Yi; Wu, Ji; Zheng, Chao; Huang, Rong Rong; Na, Yuhong; Yang, Fan; Wang, Zengshun; Wu, Di

2013-01-01

The objective of the study was to determine the effect of landing surface on plantar kinetics during a half-squat landing. Twenty male elite paratroopers with formal parachute landing training and over 2 years of parachute jumping experience were recruited. The subjects wore parachuting boots in which pressure sensing insoles were placed. Each subject was instructed to jump off a platform with a height of 60 cm, and land on either a hard or soft surface in a half-squat posture. Outcome measures were maximal plantar pressure, time to maximal plantar pressure (T-MPP), and pressure-time integral (PTI) upon landing on 10 plantar regions. Compared to a soft surface, hard surface produced higher maximal plantar pressure in the 1st to 4th metatarsal and mid-foot regions, but lower maximal plantar pressure in the 5th metatarsal region. Shorter T- MPP was found during hard surface landing in the 1st and 2nd metatarsal and medial rear foot. Landing on a hard surface landing resulted in a lower PTI than a soft surface in the 1stphalangeal region. For Chinese paratroopers, specific foot prosthesis should be designed to protect the1st to 4thmetatarsal region for hard surface landing, and the 1stphalangeal and 5thmetatarsal region for soft surface landing. Key Points Understanding plantar kinetics during the half-squat landing used by Chinese paratroopers can assist in the design of protective footwear. Compared to landing on a soft surface, a hard surface produced higher maximal plantar pressure in the 1st to 4th metatarsal and mid-foot regions, but lower maximal plantar pressure in the 5th metatarsal region. A shorter time to maximal plantar pressure was found during a hard surface landing in the 1st and 2nd metatarsals and medial rear foot. Landing on a hard surface resulted in a lower pressure-time integral than landing on a soft surface in the 1st phalangeal region. For Chinese paratroopers, specific foot prosthesis should be designed to protect the 1st to 4th metatarsal

Surface temperature and surface heat flux determination of the inverse heat conduction problem for a slab

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kuroyanagi, Toshiyuki

1983-07-01

Based on an idea that surface conditions should be a reflection of interior temperature and interior heat flux variation as inverse as interior conditions has been determined completely by the surface temperature and/on surface heat flux as boundary conditions, a method is presented for determining the surface temperature and the surface heat flux of a solid when the temperature and heat flux at an interior point are a prescribed function of time. The method is developed by the integration of Duhumels' integral which has unknown temperature or unknown heat flux in its integrand. Specific forms of surface condition determination are developed for a sample inverse problem: slab. Ducussing the effect of a degree of avairable informations at an interior point due to damped system and the effect of variation of surface conditions on those formulations, it is shown that those formulations are capable of representing the unknown surface conditions except for small time interval followed by discontinuous change of surface conditions. The small un-resolved time interval is demonstrated by a numerical example. An evaluation method of heat flux at an interior point, which is requested by those formulations, is discussed. (author)

Reviews and syntheses: An empirical spatiotemporal description of the global surface-atmosphere carbon fluxes: opportunities and data limitations

Science.gov (United States)

Zscheischler, Jakob; Mahecha, Miguel D.; Avitabile, Valerio; Calle, Leonardo; Carvalhais, Nuno; Ciais, Philippe; Gans, Fabian; Gruber, Nicolas; Hartmann, Jens; Herold, Martin; Ichii, Kazuhito; Jung, Martin; Landschützer, Peter; Laruelle, Goulven G.; Lauerwald, Ronny; Papale, Dario; Peylin, Philippe; Poulter, Benjamin; Ray, Deepak; Regnier, Pierre; Rödenbeck, Christian; Roman-Cuesta, Rosa M.; Schwalm, Christopher; Tramontana, Gianluca; Tyukavina, Alexandra; Valentini, Riccardo; van der Werf, Guido; West, Tristram O.; Wolf, Julie E.; Reichstein, Markus

2017-08-01

Understanding the global carbon (C) cycle is of crucial importance to map current and future climate dynamics relative to global environmental change. A full characterization of C cycling requires detailed information on spatiotemporal patterns of surface-atmosphere fluxes. However, relevant C cycle observations are highly variable in their coverage and reporting standards. Especially problematic is the lack of integration of the carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange of the ocean, inland freshwaters and the land surface with the atmosphere. Here we adopt a data-driven approach to synthesize a wide range of observation-based spatially explicit surface-atmosphere CO2 fluxes from 2001 to 2010, to identify the state of today's observational opportunities and data limitations. The considered fluxes include net exchange of open oceans, continental shelves, estuaries, rivers, and lakes, as well as CO2 fluxes related to net ecosystem productivity, fire emissions, loss of tropical aboveground C, harvested wood and crops, as well as fossil fuel and cement emissions. Spatially explicit CO2 fluxes are obtained through geostatistical and/or remote-sensing-based upscaling, thereby minimizing biophysical or biogeochemical assumptions encoded in process-based models. We estimate a bottom-up net C exchange (NCE) between the surface (land, ocean, and coastal areas) and the atmosphere. Though we provide also global estimates, the primary goal of this study is to identify key uncertainties and observational shortcomings that need to be prioritized in the expansion of in situ observatories. Uncertainties for NCE and its components are derived using resampling. In many regions, our NCE estimates agree well with independent estimates from other sources such as process-based models and atmospheric inversions. This holds for Europe (mean ± 1 SD: 0.8 ± 0.1 PgC yr-1, positive numbers are sources to the atmosphere), Russia (0.1 ± 0.4 PgC yr-1), East Asia (1.6 ± 0.3 PgC yr-1), South Asia (0.3 ± 0

Satellite-based Calibration of Heat Flux at the Ocean Surface

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Barron, C. N.; Dastugue, J. M.; May, J. C.; Rowley, C. D.; Smith, S. R.; Spence, P. L.; Gremes-Cordero, S.

2016-02-01

Model forecasts of upper ocean heat content and variability on diurnal to daily scales are highly dependent on estimates of heat flux through the air-sea interface. Satellite remote sensing is applied to not only inform the initial ocean state but also to mitigate errors in surface heat flux and model representations affecting the distribution of heat in the upper ocean. Traditional assimilation of sea surface temperature (SST) observations re-centers ocean models at the start of each forecast cycle. Subsequent evolution depends on estimates of surface heat fluxes and upper-ocean processes over the forecast period. The COFFEE project (Calibration of Ocean Forcing with satellite Flux Estimates) endeavors to correct ocean forecast bias through a responsive error partition among surface heat flux and ocean dynamics sources. A suite of experiments in the southern California Current demonstrates a range of COFFEE capabilities, showing the impact on forecast error relative to a baseline three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) assimilation using Navy operational global or regional atmospheric forcing. COFFEE addresses satellite-calibration of surface fluxes to estimate surface error covariances and links these to the ocean interior. Experiment cases combine different levels of flux calibration with different assimilation alternatives. The cases may use the original fluxes, apply full satellite corrections during the forecast period, or extend hindcast corrections into the forecast period. Assimilation is either baseline 3DVAR or standard strong-constraint 4DVAR, with work proceeding to add a 4DVAR expanded to include a weak constraint treatment of the surface flux errors. Covariance of flux errors is estimated from the recent time series of forecast and calibrated flux terms. While the California Current examples are shown, the approach is equally applicable to other regions. These approaches within a 3DVAR application are anticipated to be useful for global and larger

Inventories and fluxes of 137Cs in the Syrian land

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Al-Masri, M. S.; Amin, Y.

2005-03-01

Cesium-137 inventories and atmospheric fluxes have been determined using radiocesium distributions in undistributed soil profiles, collected from 38 sites distributed all over the Syrian lands. Results have shown that 137 Cs inventories determination by Soil Layers Sum Method is more accurate than the Integration Method, where the best curve fitting of 137 Cs distribution with depth is difficult to establish. 137 Cs inventories ranged from 441 Bq.m - 2 and 13312 Bq.m - 2 using the Layers Sum Method with a mean value of 3679 Bq.m - 2; the highest values observed were in the coastal, middle and north east regions. This is due to the fact that most of Chernobyl accident atmospheric fall-out of cesium 137 had entered the Syrian land came from the west boarders (Mediterranean sea). While the lowest values were found to be in the samples collected from the east south region. In addition, 137 Cs flux ranged from 3.1 kBq m - 2y - 1 and 527.8 kBq m - 2 y - 1 with a mean value of 65.7 kBq m - 2y - 1. Moreover, there was a semi linear relationship found between 137 Cs flux and the height above sea level. While no linear relationship was found between 137 Cs flux and annual rainfall. On the other hand, the external radiation dose to Syrians that due to gamma-rays emitted from cesium 137 decay has been determined and reached a mean value of 166μ Sv.y - 1. This value is about 20% of the radiation dose received by the Syrian from naturally occurring radionuclides in soil. (Author)

Analysis of relationships between land surface temperature and land use changes in the Yellow River Delta

Science.gov (United States)

Ning, Jicai; Gao, Zhiqiang; Meng, Ran; Xu, Fuxiang; Gao, Meng

2018-06-01

This study analyzed land use and land cover changes and their impact on land surface temperature using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor imagery of the Yellow River Delta. Six Landsat images comprising two time series were used to calculate the land surface temperature and correlated vegetation indices. The Yellow River Delta area has expanded substantially because of the deposited sediment carried from upstream reaches of the river. Between 1986 and 2015, approximately 35% of the land use area of the Yellow River Delta has been transformed into salterns and aquaculture ponds. Overall, land use conversion has occurred primarily from poorly utilized land into highly utilized land. To analyze the variation of land surface temperature, a mono-window algorithm was applied to retrieve the regional land surface temperature. The results showed bilinear correlation between land surface temperature and the vegetation indices (i.e., Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Adjusted-Normalized Vegetation Index, Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index, and Modified Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index). Generally, values of the vegetation indices greater than the inflection point mean the land surface temperature and the vegetation indices are correlated negatively, and vice versa. Land surface temperature in coastal areas is affected considerably by local seawater temperature and weather conditions.

Potential feedbacks between snow cover, soil moisture and surface energy fluxes in Southern Norway

Science.gov (United States)

Brox Nilsen, Irene; Tallaksen, Lena M.; Stordal, Frode

2017-04-01

At high latitudes, the snow season has become shorter during the past decades because snowmelt is highly sensitive to a warmer climate. Snowmelt influences the energy balance by changing the albedo and the partitioning between latent and sensible heat fluxes. It further influences the water balance by changing the runoff and soil moisture. In a previous study, we identified southern Norway as a region where significant temperature changes in summer could potentially be explained by land-atmosphere interactions. In this study we hypothesise that changes in snow cover would influence the summer surface fluxes in the succeeding weeks or months. The exceptionally warm summer of 2014 was chosen as a test bed. In Norway, evapotranspiration is not soil moisture limited, but energy limited, under normal conditions. During warm summers, however, such as in 2014, evapotranspiration can be restricted by the available soil moisture. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model we replace the initial ground conditions for 2014 with conditions representative of a snow-poor spring and a snow-rich spring. WRF was coupled to Noah-MP at 3 km horizontal resolution in the inner domain, and the simulations covered mid-May through September 2014. Boundary conditions used to force WRF were taken from the Era-Interim reanalysis. Snow, runoff, soil moisture and soil temperature observational data were provided by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate for validation. The validation shows generally good agreement with observations. Preliminary results show that the reduced snowpack, hereafter "sim1" increased the air temperature by up to 5 K and the surface temperature by up to 10 K in areas affected by snow changes. The increased snowpack, hereafter "sim2", decreased the air and surface temperature by the same amount. These are weekly mean values for the first eight simulation weeks from mid May. Because of the higher net energy available ( 100 Wm-2) in sim 1, both

Operational tools and applications of EO satellite data to retrieve surface fluxes in semi-arid countries

Science.gov (United States)

Tanguy, Maliko

The objective of the thesis is to develop and evaluate useful tools and applications of Earth Observation (EO) satellite data to estimate surface fluxes in semi-arid countries. In a first part (Chapter 4), we assess the performance of a new parameterisation scheme of ground heat flux (G) to be used in remote sensing (RS) evapotranspiration (ET) estimation methods. The G-parameterisation optimized with AMMA flux data performs well and improves the sensible heat flux (H) and ET retrieved by means of the triangle method (Jiang & Islam, 2001). In a second part (Chapter 5), the triangle method is compared with ET estimated by means of a land surface model (JULES). An attempt is made to calibrate JULES using the triangle method through Monte Carlo simulations, but the two methods supply rather different results, indicating that further intercomparison tasks should be carried out to assess the performance of RS-based algorithms and land surface models in estimating the components of the land surface energy balance. Chapter 6 presents a set of operational examples for retrieving surface fluxes using RS data. The first example is the study of temporal evolution of ET-maps in Western Africa under monsoonal influence. In a second example, we apply the new scheme proposed in Chapter 4 to retrieve and analyse the long term evolution (2000-2009) of the surface energy balance components, G, H and ET at several sites of the Segura Basin (S-E Spain) using MODIS-Terra data (land surface temperature and NDVI). Temporal and spatial distribution of evapotranspiration reveals different controls on ET. (Chapter 6). In the last example, MODIS-Aqua Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is used to validate a mathematical model to retrieve surface fluxes in a Mediterranean coastal lagoon (Mar Menor, S-E Spain). El objetivo de esta tesis es de desarrollar y evaluar herramientas y aplicaciones de la teledetección para estimar flujos de superficie en zonas semiáridas. En una primera parte (Cap

The Importance of Representing Certain Key Vegetation Canopy Processes Explicitly in a Land Surface Model

Science.gov (United States)

Napoly, A.; Boone, A. A.; Martin, E.; Samuelsson, P.

2015-12-01

Land surface models are moving to more detailed vegetation canopy descriptions in order to better represent certain key processes, such as Carbon dynamics and snowpack evolution. Since such models are usually applied within coupled numerical weather prediction or spatially distributed hydrological models, these improvements must strike a balance between computational cost and complexity. The consequences of simplified or composite canopy approaches can be manifested in terms of increased errors with respect to soil temperatures, estimates of the diurnal cycle of the turbulent fluxes or snow canopy interception and melt. Vegetated areas and particularly forests are modeled in a quite simplified manner in the ISBA land surface model. However, continuous developments of surface processes now require a more accurate description of the canopy. A new version of the the model now includes a multi energy balance (MEB) option to explicitly represent the canopy and the forest floor. It will be shown that certain newly included processes such as the shading effect of the vegetation, the explicit heat capacity of the canopy, and the insulating effect of the forest floor turn out to be essential. A detailed study has been done for four French forested sites. It was found that the MEB option significantly improves the ground heat flux (RMSE decrease from 50W/m2 to 10W/m2 on average) and soil temperatures when compared against measurements. Also the sensible heat flux calculation was improved primarily owing to a better phasing with the solar insulation owing to a lower vegetation heat capacity. However, the total latent heat flux is less modified compared to the classical ISBA simulation since it is more related to water uptake and the formulation of the stomatal resistance (which are unchanged). Next, a benchmark over 40 Fluxnet sites (116 cumulated years) was performed and compared with results from the default composite soil-vegetation version of ISBA. The results show

Plasma–Surface Interactions Under High Heat and Particle Fluxes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gregory De Temmerman

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The plasma-surface interactions expected in the divertor of a future fusion reactor are characterized by extreme heat and particle fluxes interacting with the plasma-facing surfaces. Powerful linear plasma generators are used to reproduce the expected plasma conditions and allow plasma-surface interactions studies under those very harsh conditions. While the ion energies on the divertor surfaces of a fusion device are comparable to those used in various plasma-assited deposition and etching techniques, the ion (and energy fluxes are up to four orders of magnitude higher. This large upscale in particle flux maintains the surface under highly non-equilibrium conditions and bring new effects to light, some of which will be described in this paper.

ORCHIDEE-MICT (v8.4.1), a land surface model for the high latitudes: model description and validation

Science.gov (United States)

Guimberteau, Matthieu; Zhu, Dan; Maignan, Fabienne; Huang, Ye; Yue, Chao; Dantec-Nédélec, Sarah; Ottlé, Catherine; Jornet-Puig, Albert; Bastos, Ana; Laurent, Pierre; Goll, Daniel; Bowring, Simon; Chang, Jinfeng; Guenet, Bertrand; Tifafi, Marwa; Peng, Shushi; Krinner, Gerhard; Ducharne, Agnès; Wang, Fuxing; Wang, Tao; Wang, Xuhui; Wang, Yilong; Yin, Zun; Lauerwald, Ronny; Joetzjer, Emilie; Qiu, Chunjing; Kim, Hyungjun; Ciais, Philippe

2018-01-01

The high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere are a nexus for the interaction between land surface physical properties and their exchange of carbon and energy with the atmosphere. At these latitudes, two carbon pools of planetary significance - those of the permanently frozen soils (permafrost), and of the great expanse of boreal forest - are vulnerable to destabilization in the face of currently observed climatic warming, the speed and intensity of which are expected to increase with time. Improved projections of future Arctic and boreal ecosystem transformation require improved land surface models that integrate processes specific to these cold biomes. To this end, this study lays out relevant new parameterizations in the ORCHIDEE-MICT land surface model. These describe the interactions between soil carbon, soil temperature and hydrology, and their resulting feedbacks on water and CO2 fluxes, in addition to a recently developed fire module. Outputs from ORCHIDEE-MICT, when forced by two climate input datasets, are extensively evaluated against (i) temperature gradients between the atmosphere and deep soils, (ii) the hydrological components comprising the water balance of the largest high-latitude basins, and (iii) CO2 flux and carbon stock observations. The model performance is good with respect to empirical data, despite a simulated excessive plant water stress and a positive land surface temperature bias. In addition, acute model sensitivity to the choice of input forcing data suggests that the calibration of model parameters is strongly forcing-dependent. Overall, we suggest that this new model design is at the forefront of current efforts to reliably estimate future perturbations to the high-latitude terrestrial environment.

High-Resolution Mesoscale Simulations of the 6-7 May 2000 Missouri Flash Flood: Impact of Model Initialization and Land Surface Treatment

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, R. David; Wang, Yansen; Tao, Wei-Kuo; Wetzel, Peter; Belcher, Larry R.

2004-01-01

High-resolution mesoscale model simulations of the 6-7 May 2000 Missouri flash flood event were performed to test the impact of model initialization and land surface treatment on timing, intensity, and location of extreme precipitation. In this flash flood event, a mesoscale convective system (MCS) produced over 340 mm of rain in roughly 9 hours in some locations. Two different types of model initialization were employed: 1) NCEP global reanalysis with 2.5-degree grid spacing and 12-hour temporal resolution, and 2) Eta reanalysis with 40- km grid spacing and $hour temporal resolution. In addition, two different land surface treatments were considered. A simple land scheme. (SLAB) keeps soil moisture fixed at initial values throughout the simulation, while a more sophisticated land model (PLACE) allows for r interactive feedback. Simulations with high-resolution Eta model initialization show considerable improvement in the intensity of precipitation due to the presence in the initialization of a residual mesoscale convective vortex (hlCV) from a previous MCS. Simulations with the PLACE land model show improved location of heavy precipitation. Since soil moisture can vary over time in the PLACE model, surface energy fluxes exhibit strong spatial gradients. These surface energy flux gradients help produce a strong low-level jet (LLJ) in the correct location. The LLJ then interacts with the cold outflow boundary of the MCS to produce new convective cells. The simulation with both high-resolution model initialization and time-varying soil moisture test reproduces the intensity and location of observed rainfall.

Plasmas fluxes to surfaces for an oblique magnetic field

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pitcher, C.S.; Stangeby, P.C.; Elder, J.D.; Bell, M.G.; Kilpatrick, S.J.; Manos, D.M.; Medley, S.S.; Owens, D.K.; Ramsey, A.T.; Ulrickson, M.

1992-07-01

The poloidal and toroidal spatial distributions of D α , He I and C II emission have been obtained in the vicinity of the TFTR bumper limiter and are compared with models of ion flow to the surface. The distributions are found not to agree with a model (the ''Cosine'' model) which determines the incident flux density using only the parallel fluxes in the scrape-off layer and the projected area of the surface perpendicular to the field lines. In particular, the Cosine model is not able to explain the significant fluxes observed at locations on the surface which are oblique to the magnetic field. It is further shown that these fluxes cannot be explained by the finite Larmor radius of impinging ions. Finally, it is demonstrated, with the use of Monte Carlo codes, that the distributions can be explained by including both parallel and cross-field transport onto the limiter surface

A non-linear and stochastic response surface method for Bayesian estimation of uncertainty in soil moisture simulation from a land surface model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Hossain

2004-01-01

Full Text Available This study presents a simple and efficient scheme for Bayesian estimation of uncertainty in soil moisture simulation by a Land Surface Model (LSM. The scheme is assessed within a Monte Carlo (MC simulation framework based on the Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE methodology. A primary limitation of using the GLUE method is the prohibitive computational burden imposed by uniform random sampling of the model's parameter distributions. Sampling is improved in the proposed scheme by stochastic modeling of the parameters' response surface that recognizes the non-linear deterministic behavior between soil moisture and land surface parameters. Uncertainty in soil moisture simulation (model output is approximated through a Hermite polynomial chaos expansion of normal random variables that represent the model's parameter (model input uncertainty. The unknown coefficients of the polynomial are calculated using limited number of model simulation runs. The calibrated polynomial is then used as a fast-running proxy to the slower-running LSM to predict the degree of representativeness of a randomly sampled model parameter set. An evaluation of the scheme's efficiency in sampling is made through comparison with the fully random MC sampling (the norm for GLUE and the nearest-neighborhood sampling technique. The scheme was able to reduce computational burden of random MC sampling for GLUE in the ranges of 10%-70%. The scheme was also found to be about 10% more efficient than the nearest-neighborhood sampling method in predicting a sampled parameter set's degree of representativeness. The GLUE based on the proposed sampling scheme did not alter the essential features of the uncertainty structure in soil moisture simulation. The scheme can potentially make GLUE uncertainty estimation for any LSM more efficient as it does not impose any additional structural or distributional assumptions.

The esa earth explorer land surface processes and interactions mission

Science.gov (United States)

Labandibar, Jean-Yves; Jubineau, Franck; Silvestrin, Pierluigi; Del Bello, Umberto

2017-11-01

The European Space Agency (ESA) is defining candidate missions for Earth Observation. In the class of the Earth Explorer missions, dedicated to research and pre-operational demonstration, the Land Surface Processes and Interactions Mission (LSPIM) will acquire the accurate quantitative measurements needed to improve our understanding of the nature and evolution of biosphere-atmosphere interactions and to contribute significantly to a solution of the scaling problems for energy, water and carbon fluxes at the Earth's surface. The mission is intended to provide detailed observations of the surface of the Earth and to collect data related to ecosystem processes and radiation balance. It is also intended to address a range of issues important for environmental monitoring, renewable resources assessment and climate models. The mission involves a dedicated maneuvering satellite which provides multi-directional observations for systematic measurement of Land Surface BRDF (BiDirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) of selected sites on Earth. The satellite carries an optical payload : PRISM (Processes Research by an Imaging Space Mission), a multispectral imager providing reasonably high spatial resolution images (50 m over 50 km swath) in the whole optical spectral domain (from 450 nm to 2.35 μm with a resolution close to 10 nm, and two thermal bands from 8.1 to 9.1 μm). This paper presents the results of the Phase A study awarded by ESA, led by ALCATEL Space Industries and concerning the design of LSPIM.

Contrasting Convective Flux Gradients in the U.S. Corn Belt as a Result of Vegetation Land Cover Type

Science.gov (United States)

Hiestand, M.

2017-12-01

Phenological differences between extensive croplands and remnant forests in the U.S. Corn Belt have been suggested as enhancing spatial gradients of latent and sensible heat fluxes that contribute to the distribution and amounts of convective rainfall on mesoscales. However, the exact magnitude of the intra-seasonal variability in convective fluxes between these two land-cover types has yet to be quantified. Previous work suggesting that non-classical mesoscale circulations operate within the Corn Belt has not involved direct flux observations obtained using the eddy flux covariance technique. This study compares five day running means of daily heat fluxes between two Ameriflux towers (US-Bo1 in Illinois and US-MMS in Indiana) representing rain-fed cropland and remnant forest, respectively for the growing seasons of 1999-2008. Latent heat values normalized to the net radiation show higher rates of evapotranspiration at the forested site than over the cropland during the start of the growing season. However, toward the end of the growing season, latent heat fluxes from the forest decrease and the cropland becomes the dominate source of evapotranspiration. Conversely, croplands dominate sensible heat fluxes at the start of the growing season whereas the remnant forests are associated with strong sensible heat fluxes in late summer. These intra-seasonal spatial differences of latent and sensible heat fluxes across the Corn Belt imply differences in moisture pooling that are suggested as enhancing atmospheric convection during favorable synoptic conditions, especially near the boundaries of these two land cover types. Understanding the physical mechanisms by which the spatial distribution of vegetated land cover can generate contrasting latent and sensible heat fluxes will lay the groundwork for improving mesoscale precipitation forecasts in the Corn Belt, and determining the possible impacts of ongoing land-cover and climate changes there.

Changes of soil carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide fluxes in relation to land use/cover management.

Science.gov (United States)

Kooch, Yahya; Moghimian, Negar; Bayranvand, Mohammad; Alberti, Giorgio

2016-06-01

Conversions of land use/cover are associated with changes in soil properties and biogeochemical cycling, with implications for carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and trace gas fluxes. In an attempt to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the significance of different land uses (Alnus subcordata plantation, Taxodium distichum plantation, agriculture, and deforested areas) on soil features and on the dynamics of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes at local scale, this study was carried out in Mazandaran province, northern Iran. Sixteen samples per land use, from the top 10 cm of soil, were taken, from which bulk density, texture, water content, pH, organic C, total N, microbial biomass of C and N, and earthworm density/biomass were determined. In addition, the seasonal changes in the fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) were monitored over a year. Our results indicated that the different land uses were different in terms of soil properties and GHG fluxes. Even though the amount of the GHG varied widely during the year, the highest CO2 and CH4 fluxes (0.32 mg CO2 m(-2) day(-1) and 0.11 mg CH4 m(-2) day(-1), respectively) were recorded in the deforested areas. N2O flux was higher in Alnus plantation (0.18 mg N2O m(-2) day(-1)) and deforested areas (0.17 mg N2O m(-2) day(-1)) than at agriculture site (0.05 mg N2O m(-2) day(-1)) and Taxodium plantation (0.03 mg N2O m(-2) day(-1)). This study demonstrated strong impacts of land use change on soil-atmosphere trace gas exchanges and provides useful observational constraints for top-down and bottom-up biogeochemistry models.

REMOTE SENSING AND SURFACE ENERGY FLUX MODELS TO DERIVE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION AND CROP COEFFICIENT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Salvatore Barbagallo

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Remote sensing techniques using high resolution satellite images provide opportunities to evaluate daily crop water use and its spatial and temporal distribution on a field by field basis. Mapping this indicator with pixels of few meters of size on extend areas allows to characterize different processes and parameters. Satellite data on vegetation reflectance, integrated with in field measurements of canopy coverage features and the monitoring of energy fluxes through the soil-plant-atmosphere system, allow to estimate conventional irrigation components (ET, Kc thus improving irrigation strategies. In the study, satellite potential evapotranspiration (ETp and crop coefficient (Kc maps of orange orchards are derived using semi-empirical approaches between reflectance data from IKONOS imagery and ground measurements of vegetation features. The monitoring of energy fluxes through the orchard allows to estimate actual crop evapotranspiration (ETa using energy balance and the Surface Renewal theory. The approach indicates substantial promise as an efficient, accurate and relatively inexpensive procedure to predict actual ET fluxes and Kc from irrigated lands.

Frozen soil and snow cover with respect to the hydrological land-surface behaviour; Gefrorener Boden und Schneebedeckung unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung des hydrologischen Verhaltens der Landoberflaeche

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Warrach, K. [GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht GmbH (Germany). Inst. fuer Atmosphaerenphysik

2000-07-01

Investigations of the water and energy cycle in the climate system using atmospheric circulation models require a proper representation of the land surface. The land-surface model SEWAB calculates the vertical exchange of water and energy between the atmosphere and the land-surface. This includes the calculation of runoff from the land-surface into the rivers and of the vertical heat and water fluxes within the soil. The inclusion of soil freezing and thawing and the accumulation and ablation of a snow cover in SEWAB is introduced. Additionally changes in the runoff calculation such as the inclusion of the TOPMODEL-approach to consider orographic effects are made. Applications carried out for various regions of North America show good agreement between model results and measurements. (orig.)

Calibration of an integrated land surface process and radiobrightness (LSP/R) model during summertime

Science.gov (United States)

Judge, Jasmeet; England, Anthony W.; Metcalfe, John R.; McNichol, David; Goodison, Barry E.

2008-01-01

In this study, a soil vegetation and atmosphere transfer (SVAT) model was linked with a microwave emission model to simulate microwave signatures for different terrain during summertime, when the energy and moisture fluxes at the land surface are strong. The integrated model, land surface process/radiobrightness (LSP/R), was forced with weather and initial conditions observed during a field experiment. It simulated the fluxes and brightness temperatures for bare soil and brome grass in the Northern Great Plains. The model estimates of soil temperature and moisture profiles and terrain brightness temperatures were compared with the observed values. Overall, the LSP model provides realistic estimates of soil moisture and temperature profiles to be used with a microwave model. The maximum mean differences and standard deviations between the modeled and the observed temperatures (canopy and soil) were 2.6 K and 6.8 K, respectively; those for the volumetric soil moisture were 0.9% and 1.5%, respectively. Brightness temperatures at 19 GHz matched well with the observations for bare soil, when a rough surface model was incorporated indicating reduced dielectric sensitivity to soil moisture by surface roughness. The brightness temperatures of the brome grass matched well with the observations indicating that a simple emission model was sufficient to simulate accurate brightness temperatures for grass typical of that region and surface roughness was not a significant issue for grass-covered soil at 19 GHz. Such integrated SVAT-microwave models allow for direct assimilation of microwave observations and can also be used to understand sensitivity of microwave signatures to changes in weather forcings and soil conditions for different terrain types.

Evaluation of the global MODIS 30 arc-second spatially and temporally complete snow-free land surface albedo and reflectance anisotropy dataset

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Qingsong; Wang, Zhuosen; Li, Zhan; Erb, Angela; Schaaf, Crystal B.

2017-06-01

Land surface albedo is an essential variable for surface energy and climate modeling as it describes the proportion of incident solar radiant flux that is reflected from the Earth's surface. To capture the temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity of the land surface, satellite remote sensing must be used to monitor albedo accurately at a global scale. However, large data gaps caused by cloud or ephemeral snow have slowed the adoption of satellite albedo products by the climate modeling community. To address the needs of this community, we used a number of temporal and spatial gap-filling strategies to improve the spatial and temporal coverage of the global land surface MODIS BRDF, albedo and NBAR products. A rigorous evaluation of the gap-filled values shows good agreement with original high quality data (RMSE = 0.027 for the NIR band albedo, 0.020 for the red band albedo). This global snow-free and cloud-free MODIS BRDF and albedo dataset (established from 2001 to 2015) offers unique opportunities to monitor and assess the impact of the changes on the Earth's land surface.

How important is getting the land surface energy exchange correct in WRF for wind energy forecasting?

Science.gov (United States)

Wharton, S.; Simpson, M.; Osuna, J. L.; Newman, J. F.; Biraud, S.

2013-12-01

Wind power forecasting is plagued with difficulties in accurately predicting the occurrence and intensity of atmospheric conditions at the heights spanned by industrial-scale turbines (~ 40 to 200 m above ground level). Better simulation of the relevant physics would enable operational practices such as integration of large fractions of wind power into power grids, scheduling maintenance on wind energy facilities, and deciding design criteria based on complex loads for next-generation turbines and siting. Accurately simulating the surface energy processes in numerical models may be critically important for wind energy forecasting as energy exchange at the surface strongly drives atmospheric mixing (i.e., stability) in the lower layers of the planetary boundary layer (PBL), which in turn largely determines wind shear and turbulence at heights found in the turbine rotor-disk. We hypothesize that simulating accurate a surface-atmosphere energy coupling should lead to more accurate predictions of wind speed and turbulence at heights within the turbine rotor-disk. Here, we tested 10 different land surface model configurations in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model including Noah, Noah-MP, SSiB, Pleim-Xiu, RUC, and others to evaluate (1) the accuracy of simulated surface energy fluxes to flux tower measurements, (2) the accuracy of forecasted wind speeds to observations at rotor-disk heights, and (3) the sensitivity of forecasting hub-height rotor disk wind speed to the choice of land surface model. WRF was run for four, two-week periods covering both summer and winter periods over the Southern Great Plains ARM site in Oklahoma. Continuous measurements of surface energy fluxes and lidar-based wind speed, direction and turbulence were also available. The SGP ARM site provided an ideal location for this evaluation as it centrally located in the wind-rich Great Plains and multi-MW wind farms are rapidly expanding in the area. We found significant differences in

Egypt satellite images for land surface characterization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hasager, Charlotte Bay

images used for mapping the vegetation cover types and other land cover types in Egypt. The mapping ranges from 1 km resolution to 30 m resolution. The aim is to provide satellite image mapping with land surface characteristics relevant for roughness mapping.......Satellite images provide information on the land surface properties. From optical remote sensing images in the blue, green, red and near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum it is possible to identify a large number of surface features. The report briefly describes different satellite...

Enhancing Global Land Surface Hydrology Estimates from the NASA MERRA Reanalysis Using Precipitation Observations and Model Parameter Adjustments

Science.gov (United States)

Reichle, Rolf; Koster, Randal; DeLannoy, Gabrielle; Forman, Barton; Liu, Qing; Mahanama, Sarith; Toure, Ally

2011-01-01

The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) is a state-of-the-art reanalysis that provides. in addition to atmospheric fields. global estimates of soil moisture, latent heat flux. snow. and runoff for J 979-present. This study introduces a supplemental and improved set of land surface hydrological fields ('MERRA-Land') generated by replaying a revised version of the land component of the MERRA system. Specifically. the MERRA-Land estimates benefit from corrections to the precipitation forcing with the Global Precipitation Climatology Project pentad product (version 2.1) and from revised parameters in the rainfall interception model, changes that effectively correct for known limitations in the MERRA land surface meteorological forcings. The skill (defined as the correlation coefficient of the anomaly time series) in land surface hydrological fields from MERRA and MERRA-Land is assessed here against observations and compared to the skill of the state-of-the-art ERA-Interim reanalysis. MERRA-Land and ERA-Interim root zone soil moisture skills (against in situ observations at 85 US stations) are comparable and significantly greater than that of MERRA. Throughout the northern hemisphere, MERRA and MERRA-Land agree reasonably well with in situ snow depth measurements (from 583 stations) and with snow water equivalent from an independent analysis. Runoff skill (against naturalized stream flow observations from 15 basins in the western US) of MERRA and MERRA-Land is typically higher than that of ERA-Interim. With a few exceptions. the MERRA-Land data appear more accurate than the original MERRA estimates and are thus recommended for those interested in using '\\-tERRA output for land surface hydrological studies.

Stable water isotopes in the coupled atmosphere–land surface model ECHAM5-JSBACH

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

B. Haese

2013-09-01

Full Text Available In this study we present first results of a new model development, ECHAM5-JSBACH-wiso, where we have incorporated the stable water isotopes H218O and HDO as tracers in the hydrological cycle of the coupled atmosphere–land surface model ECHAM5-JSBACH. The ECHAM5-JSBACH-wiso model was run under present-day climate conditions at two different resolutions (T31L19, T63L31. A comparison between ECHAM5-JSBACH-wiso and ECHAM5-wiso shows that the coupling has a strong impact on the simulated temperature and soil wetness. Caused by these changes of temperature and the hydrological cycle, the δ18O in precipitation also shows variations from −4‰ up to 4‰. One of the strongest anomalies is shown over northeast Asia where, due to an increase of temperature, the δ18O in precipitation increases as well. In order to analyze the sensitivity of the fractionation processes over land, we compare a set of simulations with various implementations of these processes over the land surface. The simulations allow us to distinguish between no fractionation, fractionation included in the evaporation flux (from bare soil and also fractionation included in both evaporation and transpiration (from water transport through plants fluxes. While the isotopic composition of the soil water may change for δ18O by up to +8&permil:, the simulated δ18O in precipitation shows only slight differences on the order of ±1‰. The simulated isotopic composition of precipitation fits well with the available observations from the GNIP (Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation database.

The Role of Surface Energy Exchange for Simulating Wind Inflow: An Evaluation of Multiple Land Surface Models in WRF for the Southern Great Plains Site Field Campaign Report

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wharton, Sonia [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Simpson, Matthew [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Osuna, Jessica [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Newman, Jennifer [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Biraud, Sebastien [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

2016-05-01

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to investigate choice of land surface model (LSM) on the near-surface wind profile, including heights reached by multi-megawatt wind turbines. Simulations of wind profiles and surface energy fluxes were made using five LSMs of varying degrees of sophistication in dealing with soil-plant-atmosphere feedbacks for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) Central Facility in Oklahoma. Surface-flux and wind-profile measurements were available for validation. The WRF model was run for three two-week periods during which varying canopy and meteorological conditions existed. The LSMs predicted a wide range of energy-flux and wind-shear magnitudes even during the cool autumn period when we expected less variability. Simulations of energy fluxes varied in accuracy by model sophistication, whereby LSMs with very simple or no soil-plant-atmosphere feedbacks were the least accurate; however, the most complex models did not consistently produce more accurate results. Errors in wind shear also were sensitive to LSM choice and were partially related to the accuracy of energy flux data. The variability of LSM performance was relatively high, suggesting that LSM representation of energy fluxes in the WRF model remains a significant source of uncertainty for simulating wind turbine inflow conditions.

Exploiting the MODIS albedos with the Two-stream Inversion Package (JRC-TIP): 2. Fractions of transmitted and absorbed fluxes in the vegetation and soil layers

Science.gov (United States)

Pinty, B.; Clerici, M.; Andredakis, I.; Kaminski, T.; Taberner, M.; Verstraete, M. M.; Gobron, N.; Plummer, S.; Widlowski, J.-L.

2011-05-01

The two-stream model parameters and associated uncertainties retrieved by inversion against MODIS broadband visible and near-infrared white sky surface albedos were discussed in a companion paper. The present paper concentrates on the partitioning of the solar radiation fluxes delivered by the Joint Research Centre Two-stream Inversion Package (JRC-TIP). The estimation of the various flux fractions related to the vegetation and the background layers separately capitalizes on the probability density functions of the model parameters discussed in the companion paper. The propagation of uncertainties from the observations to the model parameters is achieved via the Hessian of the cost function and yields a covariance matrix of posterior parameter uncertainties. This matrix is propagated to the radiation fluxes via the model's Jacobian matrix of first derivatives. Results exhibit a rather good spatiotemporal consistency given that the prior values on the model parameters are not specified as a function of land cover type and/or vegetation phenological states. A specific investigation based on a scenario imposing stringent conditions of leaf absorbing and scattering properties highlights the impact of such constraints that are, as a matter of fact, currently adopted in vegetation index approaches. Special attention is also given to snow-covered and snow-contaminated areas since these regions encompass significant reflectance changes that strongly affect land surface processes. A definite asset of the JRC-TIP lies in its capability to control and ultimately relax a number of assumptions that are often implicit in traditional approaches. These features greatly help us understand the discrepancies between the different data sets of land surface properties and fluxes that are currently available. Through a series of selected examples, the inverse procedure implemented in the JRC-TIP is shown to be robust, reliable, and compliant with large-scale processing requirements

Using a thermal-based two source energy balance model with time-differencing to estimate surface energy fluxes with day-night MODIS observations

Science.gov (United States)

Guzinski, R.; Anderson, M. C.; Kustas, W. P.; Nieto, H.; Sandholt, I.

2013-07-01

The Dual Temperature Difference (DTD) model, introduced by Norman et al. (2000), uses a two source energy balance modelling scheme driven by remotely sensed observations of diurnal changes in land surface temperature (LST) to estimate surface energy fluxes. By using a time-differential temperature measurement as input, the approach reduces model sensitivity to errors in absolute temperature retrieval. The original formulation of the DTD required an early morning LST observation (approximately 1 h after sunrise) when surface fluxes are minimal, limiting application to data provided by geostationary satellites at sub-hourly temporal resolution. The DTD model has been applied primarily during the active growth phase of agricultural crops and rangeland vegetation grasses, and has not been rigorously evaluated during senescence or in forested ecosystems. In this paper we present modifications to the DTD model that enable applications using thermal observations from polar orbiting satellites, such as Terra and Aqua, with day and night overpass times over the area of interest. This allows the application of the DTD model in high latitude regions where large viewing angles preclude the use of geostationary satellites, and also exploits the higher spatial resolution provided by polar orbiting satellites. A method for estimating nocturnal surface fluxes and a scheme for estimating the fraction of green vegetation are developed and evaluated. Modification for green vegetation fraction leads to significantly improved estimation of the heat fluxes from the vegetation canopy during senescence and in forests. When the modified DTD model is run with LST measurements acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board the Terra and Aqua satellites, generally satisfactory agreement with field measurements is obtained for a number of ecosystems in Denmark and the United States. Finally, regional maps of energy fluxes are produced for the Danish

Using a thermal-based two source energy balance model with time-differencing to estimate surface energy fluxes with day–night MODIS observations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. Guzinski

2013-07-01

Full Text Available The Dual Temperature Difference (DTD model, introduced by Norman et al. (2000, uses a two source energy balance modelling scheme driven by remotely sensed observations of diurnal changes in land surface temperature (LST to estimate surface energy fluxes. By using a time-differential temperature measurement as input, the approach reduces model sensitivity to errors in absolute temperature retrieval. The original formulation of the DTD required an early morning LST observation (approximately 1 h after sunrise when surface fluxes are minimal, limiting application to data provided by geostationary satellites at sub-hourly temporal resolution. The DTD model has been applied primarily during the active growth phase of agricultural crops and rangeland vegetation grasses, and has not been rigorously evaluated during senescence or in forested ecosystems. In this paper we present modifications to the DTD model that enable applications using thermal observations from polar orbiting satellites, such as Terra and Aqua, with day and night overpass times over the area of interest. This allows the application of the DTD model in high latitude regions where large viewing angles preclude the use of geostationary satellites, and also exploits the higher spatial resolution provided by polar orbiting satellites. A method for estimating nocturnal surface fluxes and a scheme for estimating the fraction of green vegetation are developed and evaluated. Modification for green vegetation fraction leads to significantly improved estimation of the heat fluxes from the vegetation canopy during senescence and in forests. When the modified DTD model is run with LST measurements acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS on board the Terra and Aqua satellites, generally satisfactory agreement with field measurements is obtained for a number of ecosystems in Denmark and the United States. Finally, regional maps of energy fluxes are produced for the

Impact of highway construction on land surface energy balance and local climate derived from LANDSAT satellite data.

Science.gov (United States)

Nedbal, Václav; Brom, Jakub

2018-08-15

Extensive construction of highways has a major impact on the landscape and its structure. They can also influence local climate and heat fluxes in the surrounding area. After the removal of vegetation due to highway construction, the amount of solar radiation energy used for plant evapotranspiration (latent heat flux) decreases, bringing about an increase in landscape surface temperature, changing the local climate and increasing surface run-off. In this study, we evaluated the impact of the D8 highway construction (Central Bohemia, Czech Republic) on the distribution of solar radiation energy into the various heat fluxes (latent, sensible and ground heat flux) and related surface functional parameters (surface temperature and surface wetness). The aim was to describe the severity of the impact and the distance from the actual highway in which it can be observed. LANDSAT multispectral satellite images and field meteorological measurements were used to calculate surface functional parameters and heat balance before and during the highway construction. Construction of a four-lane highway can influence the heat balance of the landscape surface as far as 90m in the perpendicular direction from the highway axis, i.e. up to 75m perpendicular from its edge. During a summer day, the decrease in evapotranspired water can reach up to 43.7m 3 per highway kilometre. This means a reduced cooling effect, expressed as the decrease in latent heat flux, by an average of 29.7MWh per day per highway kilometre and its surroundings. The loss of the cooling ability of the land surface by evaporation can lead to a rise in surface temperature by as much as 7°C. Thus, the results indicate the impact of extensive line constructions on the local climate. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The impact of urban morphology and land cover on the sensible heat flux retrieved by satellite and in-situ observations

Science.gov (United States)

Gawuc, L.; Łobocki, L.; Kaminski, J. W.

2017-12-01

Land surface temperature (LST) is a key parameter in various applications for urban environments research. However, remotely-sensed radiative surface temperature is not equivalent to kinetic nor aerodynamic surface temperature (Becker and Li, 1995; Norman and Becker, 1995). Thermal satellite observations of urban areas are also prone to angular anisotropy which is directly connected with the urban structure and relative sun-satellite position (Hu et al., 2016). Sensible heat flux (Qh) is the main component of surface energy balance in urban areas. Retrieval of Qh, requires observations of, among others, a temperature gradient. The lower level of temperature measurement is commonly replaced by remotely-sensed radiative surface temperature (Chrysoulakis, 2003; Voogt and Grimmond, 2000; Xu et al., 2008). However, such replacement requires accounting for the differences between aerodynamic and radiative surface temperature (Chehbouni et al., 1996; Sun and Mahrt, 1995). Moreover, it is important to avoid micro-scale processes, which play a major role in the roughness sublayer. This is due to the fact that Monin-Obukhov similarity theory is valid only in dynamic sublayer. We will present results of the analyses of the impact of urban morphology and land cover on the seasonal changes of sensible heat flux (Qh). Qh will be retrieved by two approaches. First will be based on satellite observations of radiative surface temperature and second will be based on in-situ observations of kinetic road temperature. Both approaches will utilize wind velocity, and air temperature observed in-situ. We will utilize time series of MODIS LST observations for the period of 2005-2014 as well as simultaneous in-situ observations collected by road weather network (9 stations). Ground stations are located across the city of Warsaw, outside the city centre in low-rise urban structure. We will account for differences in urban morphology and land cover in the proximity of ground stations. We will

A Bayesian analysis of sensible heat flux estimation: Quantifying uncertainty in meteorological forcing to improve model prediction

KAUST Repository

Ershadi, Ali

2013-05-01

The influence of uncertainty in land surface temperature, air temperature, and wind speed on the estimation of sensible heat flux is analyzed using a Bayesian inference technique applied to the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) model. The Bayesian approach allows for an explicit quantification of the uncertainties in input variables: a source of error generally ignored in surface heat flux estimation. An application using field measurements from the Soil Moisture Experiment 2002 is presented. The spatial variability of selected input meteorological variables in a multitower site is used to formulate the prior estimates for the sampling uncertainties, and the likelihood function is formulated assuming Gaussian errors in the SEBS model. Land surface temperature, air temperature, and wind speed were estimated by sampling their posterior distribution using a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Results verify that Bayesian-inferred air temperature and wind speed were generally consistent with those observed at the towers, suggesting that local observations of these variables were spatially representative. Uncertainties in the land surface temperature appear to have the strongest effect on the estimated sensible heat flux, with Bayesian-inferred values differing by up to ±5°C from the observed data. These differences suggest that the footprint of the in situ measured land surface temperature is not representative of the larger-scale variability. As such, these measurements should be used with caution in the calculation of surface heat fluxes and highlight the importance of capturing the spatial variability in the land surface temperature: particularly, for remote sensing retrieval algorithms that use this variable for flux estimation.

ORCHIDEE-MICT (v8.4.1, a land surface model for the high latitudes: model description and validation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Guimberteau

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere are a nexus for the interaction between land surface physical properties and their exchange of carbon and energy with the atmosphere. At these latitudes, two carbon pools of planetary significance – those of the permanently frozen soils (permafrost, and of the great expanse of boreal forest – are vulnerable to destabilization in the face of currently observed climatic warming, the speed and intensity of which are expected to increase with time. Improved projections of future Arctic and boreal ecosystem transformation require improved land surface models that integrate processes specific to these cold biomes. To this end, this study lays out relevant new parameterizations in the ORCHIDEE-MICT land surface model. These describe the interactions between soil carbon, soil temperature and hydrology, and their resulting feedbacks on water and CO2 fluxes, in addition to a recently developed fire module. Outputs from ORCHIDEE-MICT, when forced by two climate input datasets, are extensively evaluated against (i temperature gradients between the atmosphere and deep soils, (ii the hydrological components comprising the water balance of the largest high-latitude basins, and (iii CO2 flux and carbon stock observations. The model performance is good with respect to empirical data, despite a simulated excessive plant water stress and a positive land surface temperature bias. In addition, acute model sensitivity to the choice of input forcing data suggests that the calibration of model parameters is strongly forcing-dependent. Overall, we suggest that this new model design is at the forefront of current efforts to reliably estimate future perturbations to the high-latitude terrestrial environment.

Downscaling Coarse Actual ET Data Using Land Surface Resistance

Science.gov (United States)

Shen, T.

2017-12-01

This study proposed a new approach of downscaling ETWATCH 1km actual evapotranspiration (ET) product to a spatial resolution of 30m using land surface resistance that simulated mainly from monthly Landsat8 data and Jarvis method, which combined the benefits of both high temporal resolution of ETWATCH product and fine spatial resolution of Landsat8. The driving factor, surface resistance (Rs), was chosen for the reason that could reflect the transfer ability of vapor flow over canopy. Combined resistance Rs both upon canopy conditions, atmospheric factors and available water content of soil, which remains stable inside one ETWATCH pixel (1km). In this research, we used ETWATCH 1km ten-day actual ET product from April to October in a total of twenty-one images and monthly 30 meters cloud-free NDVI of 2013 (two images from HJ as a substitute due to cloud contamination) combined meteorological indicators for downscaling. A good agreement and correlation were obtained between the downscaled data and three flux sites observation in the middle reach of Heihe basin. The downscaling results show good consistency with the original ETWATCH 1km data both temporal and spatial scale over different land cover types with R2 ranged from 0.8 to 0.98. Besides, downscaled result captured the progression of vegetation transpiration well. This study proved the practicability of new downscaling method in the water resource management.

Downscaling Satellite Land Surface Temperatures in Urban Regions for Surface Energy Balance Study and Heat Index Development

Science.gov (United States)

Norouzi, H.; Bah, A.; Prakash, S.; Nouri, N.; Blake, R.

2017-12-01

A great percentage of the world's population reside in urban areas that are exposed to the threats of global and regional climate changes and associated extreme weather events. Among them, urban heat islands have significant health and economic impacts due to higher thermal gradients of impermeable surfaces in urban regions compared to their surrounding rural areas. Therefore, accurate characterization of the surface energy balance in urban regions are required to predict these extreme events. High spatial resolution Land surface temperature (LST) in the scale of street level in the cities can provide wealth of information to study surface energy balance and eventually providing a reliable heat index. In this study, we estimate high-resolution LST maps using combination of LandSat 8 and infrared based satellite products such as Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and newly launched Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R). Landsat 8 provides higher spatial resolution (30 m) estimates of skin temperature every 16 days. However, MODIS and GOES-R have lower spatial resolution (1km and 4km respectively) with much higher temporal resolution. Several statistical downscaling methods were investigated to provide high spatiotemporal LST maps in urban regions. The results reveal that statistical methods such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) can provide reliable estimations of LST downscaling with 2K accuracy. Other methods also were tried including aggregating (up-scaling) the high-resolution data to a coarse one to examine the limitations and to build the model. Additionally, we deployed flux towers over distinct materials such as concrete, asphalt, and rooftops in New York City to monitor the sensible and latent heat fluxes through eddy covariance method. To account for the incoming and outgoing radiation, a 4-component radiometer is used that can observe both incoming and outgoing longwave and shortwave radiation. This

The role of soil moisture in land surface-atmosphere coupling: climate model sensitivity experiments over India

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Charles; Turner, Andrew

2015-04-01

It is generally acknowledged that anthropogenic land use changes, such as a shift from forested land into irrigated agriculture, may have an impact on regional climate and, in particular, rainfall patterns in both time and space. India provides an excellent example of a country in which widespread land use change has occurred during the last century, as the country tries to meet its growing demand for food. Of primary concern for agriculture is the Indian summer monsoon (ISM), which displays considerable seasonal and subseasonal variability. Although it is evident that changing rainfall variability will have a direct impact on land surface processes (such as soil moisture variability), the reverse impact is less well understood. However, the role of soil moisture in the coupling between the land surface and atmosphere needs to be properly explored before any potential impact of changing soil moisture variability on ISM rainfall can be understood. This paper attempts to address this issue, by conducting a number of sensitivity experiments using a state-of-the-art climate model from the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre: HadGEM2. Several experiments are undertaken, with the only difference between them being the extent to which soil moisture is coupled to the atmosphere. Firstly, the land surface is fully coupled to the atmosphere, globally (as in standard model configurations); secondly, the land surface is entirely uncoupled from the atmosphere, again globally, with soil moisture values being prescribed on a daily basis; thirdly, the land surface is uncoupled from the atmosphere over India but fully coupled elsewhere; and lastly, vice versa (i.e. the land surface is coupled to the atmosphere over India but uncoupled elsewhere). Early results from this study suggest certain 'hotspot' regions where the impact of soil moisture coupling/uncoupling may be important, and many of these regions coincide with previous studies. Focusing on the third experiment, i

Simulation of Lake Surface Heat Fluxes by the Canadian Small Lake Model: Offline Performance Assessment for Future Coupling with a Regional Climate Model

Science.gov (United States)

Pernica, P.; Guerrero, J. L.; MacKay, M.; Wheater, H. S.

2014-12-01

Lakes strongly influence local and regional climate especially in regions where they are abundant. Development of a lake model for the purpose of integration within a regional climate model is therefore a subject of scientific interest. Of particular importance are the heat flux predictions provided by the lake model since they function as key forcings in a fully coupled atmosphere-land-lake system. The first step towards a coupled model is to validate and characterize the accuracy of the lake model over a range of conditions and to identify limitations. In this work, validation results from offline tests of the Canadian Small Lake Model; a deterministic, computationally efficient, 1D integral model, are presented. Heat fluxes (sensible and latent) and surface water temperatures simulated by the model are compared with in situ observations from two lakes; Landing Lake (NWT, Canada) and L239 (ELA, Canada) for the 2007-2009 period. Sensitivity analysis is performed to identify key parameters important for heat flux predictions. The results demonstrate the ability of the 1-D lake model to reproduce both diurnal and seasonal variations in heat fluxes and surface temperatures for the open water period. These results, in context of regional climate modelling are also discussed.

Seasonality and Management Affect Land Surface Temperature Differences Between Loblolly Pine and Switchgrass Ecosystems in Central Virginia

Science.gov (United States)

Ahlswede, B.; Thomas, R. Q.; O'Halloran, T. L.; Rady, J.; LeMoine, J.

2017-12-01

Changes in land-use and land management can have biogeochemical and biophysical effects on local and global climate. While managed ecosystems provide known food and fiber benefits, their influence on climate is less well quantified. In the southeastern United States, there are numerous types of intensely managed ecosystems but pine plantations and switchgrass fields represent two biogeochemical and biophysical extremes; a tall, low albedo forest with trees harvested after multiple decades vs. a short, higher albedo C4 grass field that is harvested annually. Despite the wide spread use of these ecosystems for timber and bioenergy, a quantitative, empirical evaluation of the net influence of these ecosystems on climate is lacking because it requires measuring both the greenhouse gas and energy balance of the ecosystems while controlling for the background weather and soil environment. To address this need, we established a pair of eddy flux towers in these ecosystems that are co-located (1.5 km apart) in Central Virginia and measured the radiative energy, non-radiative energy and carbon fluxes, along with associated biometeorology variables; the paired site has run since April 2016. During the first 1.5 years (two growing seasons), we found strong seasonality in the difference in surface temperature between the two ecosystems. In the growing seasons, both sites had similar surface temperature despite higher net radiation in pine. Following harvest of the switchgrass in September, the switchgrass temperatures increased relative to pine. In the winter, the pine ecosystem was warmer. We evaluate the drivers of these intra-annual dynamics and compare the climate influence of these biophysical differences to the differences in carbon fluxes between the sites using a suite of established climate regulation services metrics. Overall, our results show tradeoffs exist between the biogeochemical and biophysical climate services in managed ecosystems in the southeastern United

Land Surface Model and Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm Based on the Model-Optimization Method for Improving Soil Moisture Simulation in a Semi-Arid Region.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Qidong; Zuo, Hongchao; Li, Weidong

2016-01-01

Improving the capability of land-surface process models to simulate soil moisture assists in better understanding the atmosphere-land interaction. In semi-arid regions, due to limited near-surface observational data and large errors in large-scale parameters obtained by the remote sensing method, there exist uncertainties in land surface parameters, which can cause large offsets between the simulated results of land-surface process models and the observational data for the soil moisture. In this study, observational data from the Semi-Arid Climate Observatory and Laboratory (SACOL) station in the semi-arid loess plateau of China were divided into three datasets: summer, autumn, and summer-autumn. By combing the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and the land-surface process model SHAW (Simultaneous Heat and Water), the soil and vegetation parameters that are related to the soil moisture but difficult to obtain by observations are optimized using three datasets. On this basis, the SHAW model was run with the optimized parameters to simulate the characteristics of the land-surface process in the semi-arid loess plateau. Simultaneously, the default SHAW model was run with the same atmospheric forcing as a comparison test. Simulation results revealed the following: parameters optimized by the particle swarm optimization algorithm in all simulation tests improved simulations of the soil moisture and latent heat flux; differences between simulated results and observational data are clearly reduced, but simulation tests involving the adoption of optimized parameters cannot simultaneously improve the simulation results for the net radiation, sensible heat flux, and soil temperature. Optimized soil and vegetation parameters based on different datasets have the same order of magnitude but are not identical; soil parameters only vary to a small degree, but the variation range of vegetation parameters is large.

High-resolution climate and land surface interactions modeling over Belgium: current state and decennial scale projections

Science.gov (United States)

Jacquemin, Ingrid; Henrot, Alexandra-Jane; Beckers, Veronique; Berckmans, Julie; Debusscher, Bos; Dury, Marie; Minet, Julien; Hamdi, Rafiq; Dendoncker, Nicolas; Tychon, Bernard; Hambuckers, Alain; François, Louis

2016-04-01

(from a 4 km resolution simulation) for the recent past and the decennial projections. Evidently, these simulations lead to a first analysis of the impact of climate change on carbon stocks (e.g., biomass, soil carbon) and fluxes (e.g., gross and net primary productivities (GPP and NPP) and net ecosystem production (NEP)). The surface scheme is based on two land use/land cover databases, ECOPLAN for the Flemish region and, for the Walloon region, the COS-Wallonia database and the Belgian agricultural statistics for agricultural land. Land use and land cover are fixed through time (reference year: 2007) in these simulations, but a first attempt of coupling between CARAIB and CRAFTY will be made to establish dynamic land use change scenarios for the next decades. A simulation with variable land use would allow an analysis of land use change impacts not only on crop yields and the land carbon budget, but also on climate relevant parameters, such as surface albedo, roughness length and evapotranspiration towards a coupling with the RCM.

evaluation of land surface temperature parameterization ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

user

Surface temperature (Ts) is vital to the study of land-atmosphere interactions and ... representation of Ts in Global Climate Models using available ..... Obviously, the influence of the ambient .... diurnal cycle over land under clear and cloudy.

Forests tend to cool the land surface in the temperate zone: An analysis of the mechanisms controlling radiometric surface temperature change in managed temperate ecosystems

Science.gov (United States)

Stoy, P. C.; Katul, G. G.; Juang, J.; Siqueira, M. B.; Novick, K. A.; Essery, R.; Dore, S.; Kolb, T. E.; Montes-Helu, M. C.; Scott, R. L.

2010-12-01

Vegetation is an important control on the surface energy balance and thereby surface temperature. Boreal forests and arctic shrubs are thought to warm the land surface by absorbing more radiation than the vegetation they replace. The surface temperatures of tropical forests tend to be cooler than deforested landscapes due to enhanced evapotranspiration. The effects of reforestation on surface temperature change in the temperate zone is less-certain, but recent modeling efforts suggest forests have a global warming effect. We quantified the mechanisms driving radiometric surface changes following landcover changes using paired ecosystem case studies from the Ameriflux database with energy balance models of varying complexity. Results confirm previous findings that deciduous and coniferous forests in the southeastern U.S. are ca. 1 °C cooler than an adjacent field on an annual basis because aerodynamic/ecophysiological cooling of 2-3 °C outweighs an albedo-related warming of stand-replacing ponderosa pine fire was ca. 1 °C warmer than unburned stands because a 1.5 °C aerodynamic warming offset a slight surface cooling due to greater albedo and soil heat flux. An ecosystem dominated by mesquite shrub encroachment was nearly 2 °C warmer than a native grassland ecosystem as aerodynamic and albedo-related warming outweighed a small cooling effect due to changes in soil heat flux. The forested ecosystems in these case studies are documented to have higher carbon uptake than the non-forested systems. Results suggest that temperate forests tend to cool the land surface and suggest that previous model-based findings that forests warm the Earth’s surface globally should be reconsidered.Changes to radiometric surface temperature (K) following changes in vegetation using paired ecosystem case studies C4 grassland and shrub ecosystem surface temperatures were adjusted for differences in air temperature across sites.

Estimating regional methane surface fluxes: the relative importance of surface and GOSAT mole fraction measurements

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Fraser

2013-06-01

Full Text Available We use an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF, together with the GEOS-Chem chemistry transport model, to estimate regional monthly methane (CH4 fluxes for the period June 2009–December 2010 using proxy dry-air column-averaged mole fractions of methane (XCH4 from GOSAT (Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite and/or NOAA ESRL (Earth System Research Laboratory and CSIRO GASLAB (Global Atmospheric Sampling Laboratory CH4 surface mole fraction measurements. Global posterior estimates using GOSAT and/or surface measurements are between 510–516 Tg yr−1, which is less than, though within the uncertainty of, the prior global flux of 529 ± 25 Tg yr−1. We find larger differences between regional prior and posterior fluxes, with the largest changes in monthly emissions (75 Tg yr−1 occurring in Temperate Eurasia. In non-boreal regions the error reductions for inversions using the GOSAT data are at least three times larger (up to 45% than if only surface data are assimilated, a reflection of the greater spatial coverage of GOSAT, with the two exceptions of latitudes >60° associated with a data filter and over Europe where the surface network adequately describes fluxes on our model spatial and temporal grid. We use CarbonTracker and GEOS-Chem XCO2 model output to investigate model error on quantifying proxy GOSAT XCH4 (involving model XCO2 and inferring methane flux estimates from surface mole fraction data and show similar resulting fluxes, with differences reflecting initial differences in the proxy value. Using a series of observing system simulation experiments (OSSEs we characterize the posterior flux error introduced by non-uniform atmospheric sampling by GOSAT. We show that clear-sky measurements can theoretically reproduce fluxes within 10% of true values, with the exception of tropical regions where, due to a large seasonal cycle in the number of measurements because of clouds and aerosols, fluxes are within 15% of true fluxes. We evaluate our

Wavelet maxima curves of surface latent heat flux associated with two recent Greek earthquakes

Science.gov (United States)

Cervone, G.; Kafatos, M.; Napoletani, D.; Singh, R. P.

2004-05-01

Multi sensor data available through remote sensing satellites provide information about changes in the state of the oceans, land and atmosphere. Recent studies have shown anomalous changes in oceans, land, atmospheric and ionospheric parameters prior to earthquakes events. This paper introduces an innovative data mining technique to identify precursory signals associated with earthquakes. The proposed methodology is a multi strategy approach which employs one dimensional wavelet transformations to identify singularities in the data, and an analysis of the continuity of the wavelet maxima in time and space to identify the singularities associated with earthquakes. The proposed methodology has been employed using Surface Latent Heat Flux (SLHF) data to study the earthquakes which occurred on 14 August 2003 and on 1 March 2004 in Greece. A single prominent SLHF anomaly has been found about two weeks prior to each of the earthquakes.

Land surface Verification Toolkit (LVT)

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Sujay V.

2017-01-01

LVT is a framework developed to provide an automated, consolidated environment for systematic land surface model evaluation Includes support for a range of in-situ, remote-sensing and other model and reanalysis products. Supports the analysis of outputs from various LIS subsystems, including LIS-DA, LIS-OPT, LIS-UE. Note: The Land Information System Verification Toolkit (LVT) is a NASA software tool designed to enable the evaluation, analysis and comparison of outputs generated by the Land Information System (LIS). The LVT software is released under the terms and conditions of the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) Version 1.1 or later. Land Information System Verification Toolkit (LVT) NOSA.

Land-Surface Characteristics and Climate in West Africa: Models’ Biases and Impacts of Historical Anthropogenically-Induced Deforestation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Souleymane Sy

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Land Use Land-Cover Change (LULCC, such as deforestation, affects the climate system and land-atmosphere interactions. Using simulations carried out within the LUCID (Land Use and Climate, IDentification of robust Impacts project framework, we first quantify the role of historical land-cover change induced by human activities on surface climate in West Africa. Focusing on two contrasted African regions, we find that climate responses of land-use changes are small but they are still statistically significant. In Western Sahel, a statistically significant near-surface atmospheric cooling and a decrease in water recycling are simulated in summer in response to LULCC. Over the Guinean zone, models simulate a significant decrease in precipitation and water recycling in autumn in response to LULCC. This signal is comparable in magnitude with the effect induced by the increase in greenhouse gases. Simulated climate changes due to historical LULCC could however be underestimated because: (i the prescribed LULCC can be underestimated in those regions; (ii the climate models underestimate the coupling strength between West African surface climate and leaf area index (LAI and (iii the lack of interactive LAI in some models. Finally, our study reveals indirect atmospheric processes triggered by LULCC. Over the Western Sahel, models reveal that a significant decrease in solar reflection tend to cool down the surface and thus counteract the atmospheric feedback. Conversely, over the Guinea zone, models reveal that the indirect atmospheric processes and turbulent heat fluxes dominate the climatic responses over the direct effects of LULCC.

Surface radiation fluxes in transient climate simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Garratt, J. R.; O'Brien, D. M.; Dix, M. R.; Murphy, J. M.; Stephens, G. L.; Wild, M.

1999-01-01

Transient CO 2 experiments from five coupled climate models, in which the CO 2 concentration increases at rates of 0.6-1.1% per annum for periods of 75-200 years, are used to document the responses of surface radiation fluxes, and associated atmospheric properties, to the CO 2 increase. In all five models, the responses of global surface temperature and column water vapour are non-linear and fairly tightly constrained. Thus, global warming lies between 1.9 and 2.7 K at doubled, and between 3.1 and 4.1 K at tripled, CO 2, whilst column water vapour increases by between 3.5 and 4.5 mm at doubled, and between 7 and 8 mm at tripled, CO 2. Global cloud fraction tends to decrease by 1-2% out to tripled CO 2, mainly the result of decreases in low cloud. Global increases in column water, and differences in these increases between models, are mainly determined by the warming of the tropical oceans relative to the middle and high latitudes; these links are emphasised in the zonal profiles of warming and column water vapour increase, with strong water vapour maxima in the tropics. In all models the all-sky shortwave flux to the surface S↓ (global, annual average) changes by less than 5 W m -2 out to tripled CO 2, in some cases being essentially invariant in time. In contrast, the longwave flux to the surface L↓ increases significantly, by 25 W m -2 typically at tripled CO 2. The variations of S↓ and L↓ (clear-sky and all-sky fluxes) with increase in CO 2 concentration are generally non-linear, reflecting the effects of ocean thermal inertia, but as functions of global warming are close to linear in all five models. This is best illustrated for the clear-sky downwelling fluxes, and the net radiation. Regionally, as illustrated in zonal profiles and global distributions, greatest changes in both S↓ and L↓ are the result primarily of local maxima in warming and column water vapour increases.

Arc Motion in an Obliquely Imposed Alternating Magnetic Field

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Akiho, R; Takeda, K; Sugimoto, M

2012-01-01

The arc motion is theoretically investigated under an alternating magnetic field imposed obliquely to the arc. The arc is known to oscillate on a 2-D plane when the alternating magnetic field is imposed perpendicularly to the arc. If the alternating magnetic field is imposed obliquely to the arc, then it is expected that the arc oscillates not on the 2-D plane but in a 3-D space. For this study, 3-D simulation was performed on the motion of the plasma gas under an alternating magnetic field crossing obliquely to the arc. It was also assumed that a stream line of the plasma gas represented the arc profile. The momentum equation for the plasma gas was solved together with the continuity equation. Governing parameters for the gas motion are θ (crossing angle), v 0 (initial velocity of the plasma gas), and λ. Parameter λ is defined as λ = (I a B 0 )/Q 0 . Numerical results are reported under different operating conditions such as magnetic flux densities and the angles between the arc and the magnetic flux. If the crossing angle is larger than 4/π, the arc might be extinguished because of the drastic increase of the arc length.

Spatial distribution of potential near surface moisture flux at Yucca Mountain

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Flint, A.L.; Flint, L.E.

1994-01-01

An estimate of the areal distribution of present-day surface liquid moisture flux at Yucca Mountain was made using field measured water contents and laboratory measured rock properties. Using available data for physical and hydrologic properties (porosity, saturated hydraulic conductivity, moisture retention functions) of the volcanic rocks, surface lithologic units that are hydrologically similar were delineated. Moisture retention and relative permeability functions were assigned to each surface unit based on the similarity of the mean porosity and saturated hydraulic conductivity of the surface unit to laboratory samples of the same lithology. The potential flux into the mountain was estimated for each surface hydrologic unit using the mean saturated hydraulic conductivity for each unit and assuming all matrix flow. Using measured moisture profiles for each of the surface units, estimates were made of the depth at which seasonal fluctuations diminish and steady state downward flux conditions are likely to exist. The hydrologic properties at that depth were used with the current relative saturation of the tuff, to estimate flux as the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity. This method assumes a unit gradient. The range in estimated flux was 0.02 mm/yr for the welded Tiva Canyon to 13.4 mm/yr for the nonwelded Paintbrush Tuff. The areally averaged flux was 1.4 mm/yr. The major zones of high flux occur to the north of the potential repository boundary where the nonwelded tuffs are exposed in the major drainages

Spatial distribution of potential near surface moisture flux at Yucca Mountain

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Flint, A.L.; Flint, L.E.

1994-01-01

An estimate of the areal distribution of present-day surface liquid moisture flux at Yucca Mountain was made using field measured water contents and laboratory measured rock properties. Using available data for physical and hydrologic properties (porosity, saturated hydraulic conductivity moisture retention functions) of the volcanic rocks, surface lithologic units that are hydrologically similar were delineated. Moisture retention and relative permeability functions were assigned to each surface unit based on the similarity of the mean porosity and saturated hydraulic conductivity of the surface unit to laboratory samples of the same lithology. The potential flux into the mountain was estimated for each surface hydrologic unit using the mean saturated hydraulic conductivity for each unit and assuming all matrix flow. Using measured moisture profiles for each of the surface units, estimates were made of the depth at which seasonal fluctuations diminish and steady state downward flux conditions are likely to exist. The hydrologic properties at that depth were used with the current relative saturation of the tuff, to estimate flux as the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity. This method assumes a unit gradient. The range in estimated flux was 0.02 mm/yr for the welded Tiva Canyon to 13.4 mm/yr for the nonwelded Paintbrush Tuff. The areally averaged flux was 1.4 mm/yr. The major zones of high flux occur to the north of the potential repository boundary where the nonwelded tuffs are exposed in the major drainages

Measurements and Modeling of Turbulent Fluxes during Persistent Cold Air Pool Events in Salt Lake Valley, Utah

Science.gov (United States)

Ivey, C. E.; Sun, X.; Holmes, H.

2017-12-01

Land surface processes are important in meteorology and climate research since they control the partitioning of surface energy and water exchange at the earth's surface. The surface layer is coupled to the planetary boundary layer (PBL) by surface fluxes, which serve as sinks or sources of energy, moisture, momentum, and atmospheric pollutants. Quantifying the surface heat and momentum fluxes at the land-atmosphere interface, especially for different surface land cover types, is important because they can further influence the atmospheric dynamics, vertical mixing, and transport processes that impact local, regional, and global climate. A cold air pool (CAP) forms when a topographic depression (i.e., valley) fills with cold air, where the air in the stagnant layer is colder than the air aloft. Insufficient surface heating, which is not able to sufficiently erode the temperature inversion that forms during the nighttime stable boundary layer, can lead to the formation of persistent CAPs during wintertime. These persistent CAPs can last for days, or even weeks, and are associated with increased air pollution concentrations. Thus, realistic simulations of the land-atmosphere exchange are meaningful to achieve improved predictions of the accumulation, transport, and dispersion of air pollution concentrations. The focus of this presentation is on observations and modeling results using turbulence data collected in Salt Lake Valley, Utah during the 2010-2011 wintertime Persistent Cold Air Pool Study (PCAPS). Turbulent fluxes and the surface energy balance over seven land use types are quantified. The urban site has an energy balance ratio (EBR) larger than one (1.276). Negative Bowen ratio (-0.070) is found at the cropland site. In addition to turbulence observations, half-hourly WRF simulated net radiation, latent heat, sensible heat, ground heat fluxes during one persistent CAP event are evaluated using the PCAPS observations. The results show that sensible and latent

On Approaches to Analyze the Sensitivity of Simulated Hydrologic Fluxes to Model Parameters in the Community Land Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jie Bao

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Effective sensitivity analysis approaches are needed to identify important parameters or factors and their uncertainties in complex Earth system models composed of multi-phase multi-component phenomena and multiple biogeophysical-biogeochemical processes. In this study, the impacts of 10 hydrologic parameters in the Community Land Model on simulations of runoff and latent heat flux are evaluated using data from a watershed. Different metrics, including residual statistics, the Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient, and log mean square error, are used as alternative measures of the deviations between the simulated and field observed values. Four sensitivity analysis (SA approaches, including analysis of variance based on the generalized linear model, generalized cross validation based on the multivariate adaptive regression splines model, standardized regression coefficients based on a linear regression model, and analysis of variance based on support vector machine, are investigated. Results suggest that these approaches show consistent measurement of the impacts of major hydrologic parameters on response variables, but with differences in the relative contributions, particularly for the secondary parameters. The convergence behaviors of the SA with respect to the number of sampling points are also examined with different combinations of input parameter sets and output response variables and their alternative metrics. This study helps identify the optimal SA approach, provides guidance for the calibration of the Community Land Model parameters to improve the model simulations of land surface fluxes, and approximates the magnitudes to be adjusted in the parameter values during parametric model optimization.

Plasma response to sustainment with imposed-dynamo current drive in HIT-SI and HIT-SI3

Science.gov (United States)

Hossack, A. C.; Jarboe, T. R.; Chandra, R. N.; Morgan, K. D.; Sutherland, D. A.; Penna, J. M.; Everson, C. J.; Nelson, B. A.

2017-07-01

The helicity injected torus—steady inductive (HIT-SI) program studies efficient, steady-state current drive for magnetic confinement plasmas using a novel experimental method. Stable, high-beta spheromaks have been sustained using steady, inductive current drive. Externally induced loop voltage and magnetic flux are oscillated together so that helicity and power injection are always positive, sustaining the edge plasma current indefinitely. Imposed-dynamo current drive (IDCD) theory further shows that the entire plasma current is sustained. The method is ideal for low aspect ratio, toroidal geometries with closed flux surfaces. Experimental studies of spheromak plasmas sustained with IDCD have shown stable magnetic profiles with evidence of pressure confinement. New measurements show coherent motion of a stable spheromak in response to the imposed perturbations. On the original device two helicity injectors were mounted on either side of the spheromak and the injected mode spectrum was predominantly n  =  1. Coherent, rigid motion indicates that the spheromak is stable and a lack of plasma-generated n  =  1 energy indicates that the maximum q is maintained below 1 during sustainment. Results from the HIT-SI3 device are also presented. Three inductive helicity injectors are mounted on one side of the spheromak flux conserver. Varying the relative injector phasing changes the injected mode spectrum which includes n  =  2, 3, and higher modes.

Measurement of a surface heat flux and temperature

Science.gov (United States)

Davis, R. M.; Antoine, G. J.; Diller, T. E.; Wicks, A. L.

1994-04-01

The Heat Flux Microsensor is a new sensor which was recently patented by Virginia Tech and is just starting to be marketed by Vatell Corp. The sensor is made using the thin-film microfabrication techniques directly on the material that is to be measured. It consists of several thin-film layers forming a differential thermopile across a thermal resistance layer. The measured heat flux q is proportional to the temperature difference across the resistance layer q= k(sub g)/delta(sub g) x (t(sub 1) - T(sub 2)), where k(sub g) is the thermal conductivity and delta (sub g) is the thickness of the thermal resistance layer. Because the gages are sputter coated directly onto the surface, their total thickness is less than 2 micrometers, which is two orders of magnitude thinner than previous gages. The resulting temperature difference across the thermal resistance layer (delta is less than 1 micrometer) is very small even at high heat fluxes. To generate a measurable signal many thermocouple pairs are put in series to form a differential thermopile. The combination of series thermocouple junctions and thin-film design creates a gage with very attractive characteristics. It is not only physically non-intrusive to the flow, but also causes minimal disruption of the surface temperature. Because it is so thin, the response time is less than 20 microsec. Consequently, the frequency response is flat from 0 to over 50 kHz. Moreover, the signal of the Heat Flux Microsensor is directly proportional to the heat flux. Therefore, it can easily be used in both steady and transient flows, and it measures both the steady and unsteady components of the surface heat flux. A version of the Heat Flux Microsensor has been developed to meet the harsh demands of combustion environments. These gages use platinum and platinum-10 percent rhodium as the thermoelectric materials. The thermal resistance layer is silicon monoxide and a protective coating of Al2O3 is deposited on top of the sensor. The

Comparisons of a Quantum Annealing and Classical Computer Neural Net Approach for Inferring Global Annual CO2 Fluxes over Land

Science.gov (United States)

Halem, M.; Radov, A.; Singh, D.

2017-12-01

Investigations of mid to high latitude atmospheric CO2 show growing amplitudes in seasonal variations over the past several decades. Recent high-resolution satellite measurements of CO2 concentration are now available for three years from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2. The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program of DOE has been making long-term CO2-flux measurements (in addition to CO2 concentration and an array of other meteorological quantities) at several towers and mobile sites located around the globe at half-hour frequencies. Recent papers have shown CO2 fluxes inferred by assimilating CO2 observations into ecosystem models are largely inconsistent with station observations. An investigation of how the biosphere has reacted to changes in atmospheric CO2 is essential to our understanding of potential climate-vegetation feedbacks. Thus, new approaches for calculating CO2-flux for assimilation into land surface models are necessary for improving the prediction of annual carbon uptake. In this study, we calculate and compare the predicted CO2 fluxes results employing a Feed Forward Backward Propagation Neural Network model on two architectures, (i) an IBM Minsky Computer node and (ii) a hybrid version of the ARC D-Wave quantum annealing computer. We compare the neural net results of predictions of CO2 flux from ARM station data for three different DOE ecosystem sites; an arid plains near Oklahoma City, a northern arctic site at Barrows AL, and a tropical rainforest site in the Amazon. Training times and predictive results for the calculating annual CO2 flux for the two architectures for each of the three sites are presented. Comparative results of predictions as measured by RMSE and MAE are discussed. Plots and correlations of observed vs predicted CO2 flux are also presented for all three sites. We show the estimated training times for quantum and classical calculations when extended to calculating global annual Carbon Uptake over land. We also

Estimating local atmosphere-surface fluxes using eddy covariance and numerical Ogive optimization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sievers, Jakob; Papakyriakou, Tim; Larsen, Søren

2014-01-01

Estimating representative surface-fluxes using eddy covariance leads invariably to questions concerning inclusion or exclusion of low-frequency flux contributions. For studies where fluxes are linked to local physical parameters and up-scaled through numerical modeling efforts, low-frequency cont......Estimating representative surface-fluxes using eddy covariance leads invariably to questions concerning inclusion or exclusion of low-frequency flux contributions. For studies where fluxes are linked to local physical parameters and up-scaled through numerical modeling efforts, low...

ECOCLIMAP-II/Europe: a twofold database of ecosystems and surface parameters at 1-km resolution based on satellite information for use in land surface, meteorological and climate models

Science.gov (United States)

Faroux, S.; Kaptué Tchuenté, A. T.; Roujean, J.-L.; Masson, V.; Martin, E.; Le Moigne, P.

2012-11-01

The overall objective of the present study is to introduce the new ECOCLIMAP-II database for Europe, which is an upgrade for this region of the former initiative, ECOCLIMAP-I, already implemented at global scale. The ECOCLIMAP programme is a dual database at 1-km resolution that includes an ecosystem classification and a coherent set of land surface parameters that are primarily mandatory in meteorological modelling (notably leaf area index and albedo). Hence, the aim of this innovative physiography is to enhance the quality of initialisation and impose some surface attributes within the scope of weather forecasting and climate related studies. The strategy for implementing ECOCLIMAP-II is to depart from prevalent land cover products such as CLC2000 (Corine Land Cover) and GLC2000 (Global Land Cover) by splitting existing classes into new classes that possess a better regional character by virtue of the climatic environment (latitude, proximity to the sea, topography). The leaf area index (LAI) from MODIS and NDVI from SPOT/Vegetation yield the two proxy variables that were considered here in order to perform a multi-year trimmed analysis between 1999 and 2005 using the K-means method. Further, meteorological applications require each land cover type to appear as a partition of fractions of 4 main surface types or tiles (nature, water bodies, sea, urban areas) and, inside the nature tile, fractions of 12 Plant Functional Types (PFTs) representing generic vegetation types - principally broadleaf forest, needleleaf forest, C3 and C4 crops, grassland and bare land - as incorporated by the SVAT model ISBA developed at Météo France. This landscape division also forms the cornerstone of a validation exercise. The new ECOCLIMAP-II can be verified with auxiliary land cover products at very fine and coarse resolutions by means of versatile land occupation nomenclatures.

Assimilation of Leaf Area Index and Soil Wetness Index into the ISBA-A-gs land surface model over France

Science.gov (United States)

Barbu, A. L.; Calvet, J.-C.; Lafont, S.

2012-04-01

The development of a Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) dedicated to carbon and water cycles is considered as a key aspect for monitoring activities of terrestrial carbon fluxes. It allows the assimilation of biophysical products in order to reduce the bias between the model simulations and the observations and have a positive impact on carbon and water fluxes. This work shows the benefits of data assimilation of Earth observations for the monitoring of vegetation status and carbon fluxes, in the framework of the GEOLAND2 project, co-funded by the European Commission within the GMES initiative in FP7. In this study, the SURFEX modelling platform developed at Meteo-France is used for describing the continental vegetation state, surface fluxes and soil moisture. It consists of the land surface model ISBA-A-gs that simulates photosynthesis and plant growth. The vegetation biomass and Leaf Area Index (LAI) evolve dynamically in response to weather and climate conditions. The ECOCLIMAP database provides detailed information about the land cover at a resolution of 1 km. Over the France domain, the most present ecosystem types are grasslands (32%), C3 crop lands (24%), deciduous forest (20%), bare soil (11%), and C4 crop lands (8%).The model also includes a representation of the soil moisture stress with two different types of drought responses for herbaceous vegetation and forests. A version of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) scheme is developed for the joint assimilation of satellite-derived surface soil moisture from ASCAT-25 km product, namely Soil Wetness Index (SWI-01) developed by TU-Wien, and remote sensing LAI product provided by GEOLAND2. The GEOLAND2 LAI product is derived from CYCLOPES V3.1 and MODIS collection 5 data. It is more consistent with an effective LAI for low LAI and close to the actual LAI for high values. The assimilation experiment was conducted across France at a spatial resolution of 8 km. The study period ranges from July 2007 to December

1km Global Terrestrial Carbon Flux: Estimations and Evaluations

Science.gov (United States)

Murakami, K.; Sasai, T.; Kato, S.; Saito, M.; Matsunaga, T.; Hiraki, K.; Maksyutov, S. S.

2017-12-01

Estimating global scale of the terrestrial carbon flux change with high accuracy and high resolution is important to understand global environmental changes. Furthermore the estimations of the global spatiotemporal distribution may contribute to the political and social activities such as REDD+. In order to reveal the current state of terrestrial carbon fluxes covering all over the world and a decadal scale. The satellite-based diagnostic biosphere model is suitable for achieving this purpose owing to observing on the present global land surface condition uniformly at some time interval. In this study, we estimated the global terrestrial carbon fluxes with 1km grids by using the terrestrial biosphere model (BEAMS). And we evaluated our new carbon flux estimations on various spatial scales and showed the transition of forest carbon stocks in some regions. Because BEAMS required high resolution meteorological data and satellite data as input data, we made 1km interpolated data using a kriging method. The data used in this study were JRA-55, GPCP, GOSAT L4B atmospheric CO2 data as meteorological data, and MODIS land product as land surface satellite data. Interpolating process was performed on the meteorological data because of insufficient resolution, but not on MODIS data. We evaluated our new carbon flux estimations using the flux tower measurement (FLUXNET2015 Datasets) in a point scale. We used 166 sites data for evaluating our model results. These flux sites are classified following vegetation type (DBF, EBF, ENF, mixed forests, grass lands, croplands, shrub lands, Savannas, wetlands). In global scale, the BEAMS estimations was underestimated compared to the flux measurements in the case of carbon uptake and release. The monthly variations of NEP showed relatively high correlations in DBF and mixed forests, but the correlation coefficients of EBF, ENF, and grass lands were less than 0.5. In the meteorological factors, air temperature and solar radiation showed

Customer-oriented Data Formats and Services for Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) Products at the NASA GES DISC

Science.gov (United States)

Fang, Hongliang; Beaudoing, Hiroko; Rodell, Matthew; Teng, BIll; Vollmer, Bruce

2008-01-01

The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) is generating a series of land surface state (e.g., soil moisture and surface temperature) and flux (e.g., evaporation and sensible heat flux) products simulated by four land surface Models (CLM, Mosaic, Noah and VIC). These products are now accessible at the Hydrology Data and Information Services Center (HDISC), a component of NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GESDISC).

Hyperspatial mapping of water, energy and carbon fluxes with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Sheng; Köppl, Christian Josef; Bandini, Filippo

regularly flew over the flux site. In the near future, a smart UAV platform combining rotary and fixed wing functionality will be used as platform. The imagery acquired by UAVs will be used to retrieve the vegetation indices and land surface temperature. These data used for land surface modeling to estimate...

An investigation of the sensitivity of a land surface model to climate change using a reduced form model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lynch, A.H.; McIlwaine, S. [PAOS/CIRES, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States); Beringer, J. [Inst. of Arctic Biology, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks (United States); Bonan, G.B. [National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)

2001-05-01

In an illustration of a model evaluation methodology, a multivariate reduced form model is developed to evaluate the sensitivity of a land surface model to changes in atmospheric forcing. The reduced form model is constructed in terms of a set of ten integrative response metrics, including the timing of spring snow melt, sensible and latent heat fluxes in summer, and soil temperature. The responses are evaluated as a function of a selected set of six atmospheric forcing perturbations which are varied simultaneously, and hence each may be thought of as a six-dimensional response surface. The sensitivities of the land surface model are interdependent and in some cases illustrate a physically plausible feedback process. The important predictors of land surface response in a changing climate are the atmospheric temperature and downwelling longwave radiation. Scenarios characterized by warming and drying produce a large relative response compared to warm, moist scenarios. The insensitivity of the model to increases in precipitation and atmospheric humidity is expected to change in applications to coupled models, since these parameters are also strongly implicated, through the representation of clouds, in the simulation of both longwave and shortwave radiation. (orig.)

MUREX: a land-surface field experiment to study the annual cycle of the energy and water budgets

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J.-C. Calvet

1999-06-01

Full Text Available The MUREX (monitoring the usable soil reservoir experimentally experiment was designed to provide continuous time series of field data over a long period, in order to improve and validate the Soil-vegetation-Atmosphere Transfer (SVAT parameterisations employed in meteorological models. Intensive measurements were performed for more than three years over fallow farmland in southwestern France. To capture the main processes controlling land-atmosphere exchanges, the local climate was fully characterised, and surface water and energy fluxes, vegetation biomass, soil moisture profiles, surface soil moisture and surface and soil temperature were monitored. Additional physiological measurements were carried out during selected periods to describe the biological control of the fluxes. The MUREX data of 1995, 1996, and 1997 are presented. Four SVAT models are applied to the annual cycle of 1995. In general, they succeed in simulating the main features of the fallow functioning, although some shortcomings are revealed.Key words. Hydrology (evapotranspiration; soil moisture; water-energy interactions.

Soil surface CO2 fluxes on the Konza Prairie

Science.gov (United States)

Norman, J. M.; Garcia, R.; Verma, Shoshi B.

1990-01-01

The utilization of a soil chamber to measure fluxes of soil-surface CO2 fluxes is described in terms of equipment, analytical methods, and estimate quality. A soil chamber attached to a gas-exchange system measures the fluxes every 5-15 min, and the data are compared to measurements of the CO2 fluxes from the canopy and from the soil + canopy. The soil chamber yields good measurements when operated in a closed system that is ported to the free atmosphere, and the CO2 flux is found to have a diurnal component.

ECOCLIMAP-II/Europe: a twofold database of ecosystems and surface parameters at 1 km resolution based on satellite information for use in land surface, meteorological and climate models

Science.gov (United States)

Faroux, S.; Kaptué Tchuenté, A. T.; Roujean, J.-L.; Masson, V.; Martin, E.; Le Moigne, P.

2013-04-01

The overall objective of the present study is to introduce the new ECOCLIMAP-II database for Europe, which is an upgrade for this region of the former initiative, ECOCLIMAP-I, already implemented at global scale. The ECOCLIMAP programme is a dual database at 1 km resolution that includes an ecosystem classification and a coherent set of land surface parameters that are primarily mandatory in meteorological modelling (notably leaf area index and albedo). Hence, the aim of this innovative physiography is to enhance the quality of initialisation and impose some surface attributes within the scope of weather forecasting and climate related studies. The strategy for implementing ECOCLIMAP-II is to depart from prevalent land cover products such as CLC2000 (Corine Land Cover) and GLC2000 (Global Land Cover) by splitting existing classes into new classes that possess a better regional character by virtue of the climatic environment (latitude, proximity to the sea, topography). The leaf area index (LAI) from MODIS and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from SPOT/Vegetation (a global monitoring system of vegetation) yield the two proxy variables that were considered here in order to perform a multi-year trimmed analysis between 1999 and 2005 using the K-means method. Further, meteorological applications require each land cover type to appear as a partition of fractions of 4 main surface types or tiles (nature, water bodies, sea, urban areas) and, inside the nature tile, fractions of 12 plant functional types (PFTs) representing generic vegetation types - principally broadleaf forest, needleleaf forest, C3 and C4 crops, grassland and bare land - as incorporated by the SVAT model ISBA (Interactions Surface Biosphere Atmosphere) developed at Météo France. This landscape division also forms the cornerstone of a validation exercise. The new ECOCLIMAP-II can be verified with auxiliary land cover products at very fine and coarse resolutions by means of versatile land

Using a spatially-distributed hydrologic biogeochemistry model with nitrogen transport to study the spatial variation of carbon stocks and fluxes in a Critical Zone Observatory

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Y.; Eissenstat, D. M.; He, Y.; Davis, K. J.

2017-12-01

Most current biogeochemical models are 1-D and represent one point in space. Therefore, they cannot resolve topographically driven land surface heterogeneity (e.g., lateral water flow, soil moisture, soil temperature, solar radiation) or the spatial pattern of nutrient availability. A spatially distributed forest biogeochemical model with nitrogen transport, Flux-PIHM-BGC, has been developed by coupling a 1-D mechanistic biogeochemical model Biome-BGC (BBGC) with a spatially distributed land surface hydrologic model, Flux-PIHM, and adding an advection dominated nitrogen transport module. Flux-PIHM is a coupled physically based model, which incorporates a land-surface scheme into the Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM). The land surface scheme is adapted from the Noah land surface model, and is augmented by adding a topographic solar radiation module. Flux-PIHM is able to represent the link between groundwater and the surface energy balance, as well as land surface heterogeneities caused by topography. In the coupled Flux-PIHM-BGC model, each Flux-PIHM model grid couples a 1-D BBGC model, while nitrogen is transported among model grids via surface and subsurface water flow. In each grid, Flux-PIHM provides BBGC with soil moisture, soil temperature, and solar radiation, while BBGC provides Flux-PIHM with spatially-distributed leaf area index. The coupled Flux-PIHM-BGC model has been implemented at the Susquehanna/Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory. The model-predicted aboveground vegetation carbon and soil carbon distributions generally agree with the macro patterns observed within the watershed. The importance of abiotic variables (including soil moisture, soil temperature, solar radiation, and soil mineral nitrogen) in predicting aboveground carbon distribution is calculated using a random forest. The result suggests that the spatial pattern of aboveground carbon is controlled by the distribution of soil mineral nitrogen. A Flux-PIHM-BGC simulation

Wavelet maxima curves of surface latent heat flux associated with two recent Greek earthquakes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. Cervone

2004-01-01

Full Text Available Multi sensor data available through remote sensing satellites provide information about changes in the state of the oceans, land and atmosphere. Recent studies have shown anomalous changes in oceans, land, atmospheric and ionospheric parameters prior to earthquakes events. This paper introduces an innovative data mining technique to identify precursory signals associated with earthquakes. The proposed methodology is a multi strategy approach which employs one dimensional wavelet transformations to identify singularities in the data, and an analysis of the continuity of the wavelet maxima in time and space to identify the singularities associated with earthquakes. The proposed methodology has been employed using Surface Latent Heat Flux (SLHF data to study the earthquakes which occurred on 14 August 2003 and on 1 March 2004 in Greece. A single prominent SLHF anomaly has been found about two weeks prior to each of the earthquakes.

Soil Carbon Dioxide Production and Surface Fluxes: Subsurface Physical Controls

Science.gov (United States)

Risk, D.; Kellman, L.; Beltrami, H.

Soil respiration is a critical determinant of landscape carbon balance. Variations in soil temperature and moisture patterns are important physical processes controlling soil respiration which need to be better understood. Relationships between soil respi- ration and physical controls are typically addressed using only surface flux data but other methods also exist which permit more rigorous interpretation of soil respira- tion processes. Here we use a combination of subsurface CO_{2} concentrations, surface CO_{2} fluxes and detailed physical monitoring of the subsurface envi- ronment to examine physical controls on soil CO_{2} production at four climate observatories in Eastern Canada. Results indicate that subsurface CO_{2} produc- tion is more strongly correlated to the subsurface thermal environment than the surface CO_{2} flux. Soil moisture was also found to have an important influence on sub- surface CO_{2} production, particularly in relation to the soil moisture - soil profile diffusivity relationship. Non-diffusive profile CO_{2} transport appears to be im- portant at these sites, resulting in a de-coupling of summertime surface fluxes from subsurface processes and violating assumptions that surface CO_{2} emissions are the result solely of diffusion. These results have implications for the study of soil respiration across a broad range of terrestrial environments.

Land surface temperature representativeness in a heterogeneous area through a distributed energy-water balance model and remote sensing data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

C. Corbari

2010-10-01

Full Text Available Land surface temperature is the link between soil-vegetation-atmosphere fluxes and soil water content through the energy water balance. This paper analyses the representativeness of land surface temperature (LST for a distributed hydrological water balance model (FEST-EWB using LST from AHS (airborne hyperspectral scanner, with a spatial resolution between 2–4 m, LST from MODIS, with a spatial resolution of 1000 m, and thermal infrared radiometric ground measurements that are compared with the representative equilibrium temperature that closes the energy balance equation in the distributed hydrological model.

Diurnal and nocturnal images are analyzed due to the non stable behaviour of the thermodynamic temperature and to the non linear effects induced by spatial heterogeneity.

Spatial autocorrelation and scale of fluctuation of land surface temperature from FEST-EWB and AHS are analysed at different aggregation areas to better understand the scale of representativeness of land surface temperature in a hydrological process.

The study site is the agricultural area of Barrax (Spain that is a heterogeneous area with a patchwork of irrigated and non irrigated vegetated fields and bare soil. The used data set was collected during a field campaign from 10 to 15 July 2005 in the framework of the SEN2FLEX project.

Thermal wave propagation in blood perfused tissues under hyperthermia treatment for unique oscillatory heat flux at skin surface and appropriate initial condition

Science.gov (United States)

Dutta, Jaideep; Kundu, Balaram

2018-05-01

This paper aims to develop an analytical study of heat propagation in biological tissues for constant and variable heat flux at the skin surface correlated with Hyperthermia treatment. In the present research work we have attempted to impose two unique kind of oscillating boundary condition relevant to practical aspect of the biomedical engineering while the initial condition is constructed as spatially dependent according to a real life situation. We have implemented Laplace's Transform method (LTM) and Green Function (GFs) method to solve single phase lag (SPL) thermal wave model of bioheat equation (TWMBHE). This research work strongly focuses upon the non-invasive therapy by employing oscillating heat flux. The heat flux at the skin surface is considered as constant, sinusoidal, and cosine forms. A comparative study of the impact of different kinds of heat flux on the temperature field in living tissue explored that sinusoidal heat flux will be more effective if the time of therapeutic heating is high. Cosine heating is also applicable in Hyperthermia treatment due to its precision in thermal waveform. The result also emphasizes that accurate observation must be required for the selection of phase angle and frequency of oscillating heat flux. By possible comparison with the published experimental research work and published mathematical study we have experienced a difference in temperature distribution as 5.33% and 4.73%, respectively. A parametric analysis has been devoted to suggest an appropriate procedure of the selection of important design variables in viewpoint of an effective heating in hyperthermia treatment.

Magnetic flux surface measurements at the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Otte, Matthias; Andreeva, Tamara; Biedermann, Christoph; Bozhenkov, Sergey; Geiger, Joachim; Sunn Pedersen, Thomas [Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, Greifswald (Germany); Lazerson, Samuel [Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton (United States)

2016-07-01

Recently the first plasma operation phase of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator has been started at IPP Greifswald. Wendelstein 7-X is an optimized stellarator with a complex superconducting magnet system consisting of 50 non-planar and 20 planar field coils and further 10 normal conducting control and 5 trim coils. The magnetic confinement and hence the expected plasma performance are decisively determined by the properties of the magnet system, especially by the existence and quality of the magnetic flux surfaces. Even small error fields may result in significant changes of the flux surface topology. Therefore, measurements of the vacuum magnetic flux surfaces have been performed before plasma operation. The first experimental results confirm the existence and quality of the flux surfaces to the full extend from low field up to the nominal field strength of B=2.5T. This includes the dedicated magnetic limiter configuration that is exclusively used for the first plasma operation. Furthermore, the measurements are indicating that the intrinsic error fields are within the tolerable range and can be controlled utilizing the trim coils as expected.

Inclusion of Solar Elevation Angle in Land Surface Albedo Parameterization Over Bare Soil Surface.

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, Zhiyuan; Wei, Zhigang; Wen, Zhiping; Dong, Wenjie; Li, Zhenchao; Wen, Xiaohang; Zhu, Xian; Ji, Dong; Chen, Chen; Yan, Dongdong

2017-12-01

Land surface albedo is a significant parameter for maintaining a balance in surface energy. It is also an important parameter of bare soil surface albedo for developing land surface process models that accurately reflect diurnal variation characteristics and the mechanism behind the solar spectral radiation albedo on bare soil surfaces and for understanding the relationships between climate factors and spectral radiation albedo. Using a data set of field observations, we conducted experiments to analyze the variation characteristics of land surface solar spectral radiation and the corresponding albedo over a typical Gobi bare soil underlying surface and to investigate the relationships between the land surface solar spectral radiation albedo, solar elevation angle, and soil moisture. Based on both solar elevation angle and soil moisture measurements simultaneously, we propose a new two-factor parameterization scheme for spectral radiation albedo over bare soil underlying surfaces. The results of numerical simulation experiments show that the new parameterization scheme can more accurately depict the diurnal variation characteristics of bare soil surface albedo than the previous schemes. Solar elevation angle is one of the most important factors for parameterizing bare soil surface albedo and must be considered in the parameterization scheme, especially in arid and semiarid areas with low soil moisture content. This study reveals the characteristics and mechanism of the diurnal variation of bare soil surface solar spectral radiation albedo and is helpful in developing land surface process models, weather models, and climate models.

Remote sensing of land surface phenology

Science.gov (United States)

Meier, G.A.; Brown, Jesslyn F.

2014-01-01

Remote sensing of land-surface phenology is an important method for studying the patterns of plant and animal growth cycles. Phenological events are sensitive to climate variation; therefore phenology data provide important baseline information documenting trends in ecology and detecting the impacts of climate change on multiple scales. The USGS Remote sensing of land surface phenology program produces annually, nine phenology indicator variables at 250 m and 1,000 m resolution for the contiguous U.S. The 12 year archive is available at http://phenology.cr.usgs.gov/index.php.

Characteristics of Eurasian snowmelt and its impacts on the land surface and surface climate

Science.gov (United States)

Ye, Kunhui; Lau, Ngar-Cheung

2018-03-01

The local hydrological and climatic impacts of Eurasian snowmelt are studied using advanced land surface and atmospheric data. It is found that intense melting of snow is located at mid-high latitudes in April and May. Snowmelt plays an important role in determining the seasonal cycles of surface runoff and soil moisture (SM). Specifically, melting is accompanied by sharp responses in surface runoff and surface SM while the impacts are delayed for deeper-layer of soil. This is particularly significant in the western sector of Eurasia. On interannual timescales, the responses of various surface parameters to snowmelt in the same month are rather significant. However, the persistence of surface SM anomalies is weak due to the strong soil evaporation anomalies and surplus of surface energy for evaporation. Strong impacts on the sensible heat flux, planetary boundary layer height and precipitation in the next month following the melting of snow are identified in west Russia and Siberia. Downward propagation of surface SM anomalies is observed and a positive evaporation-convection feedback is identified in west Russia. However, the subsequent impacts on the local convective precipitation in late spring-summer and its contribution to the total precipitation are seemingly weak. The atmospheric water vapor convergence has strong control over the total precipitation anomalies. Overall, snowmelt-produced SM anomalies are not found to significantly impact the late spring-summer local climate anomalies in Northern Eurasia. Therefore, the delayed remote-responses of atmospheric circulation and climate to the melting of Eurasian snow may be only possible near the melting period.

Implications of overestimated anthropogenic CO2 emissions on East Asian and global land CO2 flux inversion

Science.gov (United States)

Saeki, Tazu; Patra, Prabir K.

2017-12-01

Measurement and modelling of regional or country-level carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes are becoming critical for verification of the greenhouse gases emission control. One of the commonly adopted approaches is inverse modelling, where CO2 fluxes (emission: positive flux, sink: negative flux) from the terrestrial ecosystems are estimated by combining atmospheric CO2 measurements with atmospheric transport models. The inverse models assume anthropogenic emissions are known, and thus the uncertainties in the emissions introduce systematic bias in estimation of the terrestrial (residual) fluxes by inverse modelling. Here we show that the CO2 sink increase, estimated by the inverse model, over East Asia (China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia), by about 0.26 PgC year-1 (1 Pg = 1012 g) during 2001-2010, is likely to be an artifact of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing too quickly in China by 1.41 PgC year-1. Independent results from methane (CH4) inversion suggested about 41% lower rate of East Asian CH4 emission increase during 2002-2012. We apply a scaling factor of 0.59, based on CH4 inversion, to the rate of anthropogenic CO2 emission increase since the anthropogenic emissions of both CO2 and CH4 increase linearly in the emission inventory. We find no systematic increase in land CO2 uptake over East Asia during 1993-2010 or 2000-2009 when scaled anthropogenic CO2 emissions are used, and that there is a need of higher emission increase rate for 2010-2012 compared to those calculated by the inventory methods. High bias in anthropogenic CO2 emissions leads to stronger land sinks in global land-ocean flux partitioning in our inverse model. The corrected anthropogenic CO2 emissions also produce measurable reductions in the rate of global land CO2 sink increase post-2002, leading to a better agreement with the terrestrial biospheric model simulations that include CO2-fertilization and climate effects.

Soil surface CO2 flux in a boreal black spruce fire chronosequence

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Chuankuan; Bond-Lamberty, Ben; Gower, Stith T.

2003-02-01

Understanding the effects of wildfire on the carbon (C) cycle of boreal forests is essential to quantifying the role of boreal forests in the global carbon cycle. Soil surface CO2 flux (Rs), the second largest C flux in boreal forests, is directly and indirectly affected by fire and is hypothesized to change during forest succession following fire. The overall objective of this study was to measure and model Rs for a black spruce (Picea mariana [Mill.] BSP) postfire chronosequence in northern Manitoba, Canada. The experiment design was a nested factorial that included two soil drainage classes (well and poorly drained) × seven postfire aged stands. Specific objectives were (1) to quantify the relationship between Rs and soil temperature for different aged boreal black spruce forests in well-drained and poorly drained soil conditions, (2) to examine Rs dynamics along postfire successional stands, and (3) to estimate annual soil surface CO2 flux for these ecosystems. Soil surface CO2 flux was significantly affected by soil drainage class (p = 0.014) and stand age (p = 0.006). Soil surface CO2 flux was positively correlated to soil temperature (R2 = 0.78, p aged stand combination. Soil surface CO2 flux was significantly greater at the well-drained than the poorly drained stands (p = 0.007) during growing season. Annual soil surface CO2 flux for the 1998, 1995, 1989, 1981, 1964, 1930, and 1870 burned stands averaged 226, 412, 357, 413, 350, 274, and 244 g C m-2 yr-1 in the well-drained stands and 146, 380, 300, 303, 256, 233, and 264 g C m-2 yr-1 in the poorly drained stands. Soil surface CO2 flux during the winter (from 1 November to 30 April) comprised from 5 to 19% of the total annual Rs. We speculate that the smaller soil surface CO2 flux in the recently burned than the older stands is mainly caused by decreased root respiration.

Response of Moist Convection to Multi-scale Surface Flux Heterogeneity

Science.gov (United States)

Kang, S. L.; Ryu, J. H.

2015-12-01

We investigate response of moist convection to multi-scale feature of the spatial variation of surface sensible heat fluxes (SHF) in the afternoon evolution of the convective boundary layer (CBL), utilizing a mesoscale-domain large eddy simulation (LES) model. The multi-scale surface heterogeneity feature is analytically created as a function of the spectral slope in the wavelength range from a few tens of km to a few hundreds of m in the spectrum of surface SHF on a log-log scale. The response of moist convection to the κ-3 - slope (where κ is wavenumber) surface SHF field is compared with that to the κ-2 - slope surface, which has a relatively weak mesoscale feature, and the homogeneous κ0 - slope surface. Given the surface energy balance with a spatially uniform available energy, the prescribed SHF has a 180° phase lag with the latent heat flux (LHF) in a horizontal domain of (several tens of km)2. Thus, warmer (cooler) surface is relatively dry (moist). For all the cases, the same observation-based sounding is prescribed for the initial condition. For all the κ-3 - slope surface heterogeneity cases, early non-precipitating shallow clouds further develop into precipitating deep thunderstorms. But for all the κ-2 - slope cases, only shallow clouds develop. We compare the vertical profiles of domain-averaged fluxes and variances, and the contribution of the mesoscale and turbulence contributions to the fluxes and variances, between the κ-3 versus κ-2 slope cases. Also the cross-scale processes are investigated.

Near-surface land disposal

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kittel, J.H.

1989-01-01

The Radioactive Waste Management Handbook provides a comprehensive, systematic treatment of nuclear waste management. Near-Surface Land Disposal, the first volume, is a primary and secondary reference for the technical community. To those unfamiliar with the field, it provides a bridge to a wealth of technical information, presenting the technology associated with the near-surface disposal of low or intermediate level wastes. Coverage ranges from incipient planning to site closure and subsequent monitoring. The book discusses the importance of a systems approach during the design of new disposal facilities so that performance objectives can be achieved; gives an overview of the radioactive wastes cosigned to near-surface disposal; addresses procedures for screening and selecting sites; and emphasizes the importance of characterizing sites and obtaining reliable geologic and hydrologic data. The planning essential to the development of particular sites (land acquisition, access, layout, surface water management, capital costs, etc.) is considered, and site operations (waste receiving, inspection, emplacement, closure, stabilization, etc.) are reviewed. In addition, the book presents concepts for improved confinement of waste, important aspects of establishing a monitoring program at the disposal facility, and corrective actions available after closure to minimize release. Two analytical techniques for evaluating alternative technologies are presented. Nontechnical issues surrounding disposal, including the difficulties of public acceptance are discussed. A glossary of technical terms is included

Evaluation of the conditions imposed by the fracture surface geometry on water seepage through fractured porous media

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fuentes, Nestor O.; Faybishenko, B.

2003-01-01

In order to determine the geometric patterns of the fracture surfaces that imposes conditions on the fluid flow through fractured porous media, a series a fracture models have been analyzed using the RIMAPS technique and the variogram method. Results confirm that the main paths followed by the fluid channels are determined by the surface topography and remain constant during water seepage evolution. Characteristics scale lengths of both situations: fracture surface and the flow of water, are also found. There exists a relationship between the scale lengths corresponding to each situation. (author)

SIERRA-Flux: Measuring Regional Surface Fluxes of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Water Vapor from an Unmanned Aircraft System

Science.gov (United States)

Fladeland; Yates, Emma Louise; Bui, Thaopaul Van; Dean-Day, Jonathan; Kolyer, Richard

2011-01-01

The Eddy-Covariance Method for quantifying surface-atmosphere fluxes is a foundational technique for measuring net ecosystem exchange and validating regional-to-global carbon cycle models. While towers or ships are the most frequent platform for measuring surface-atmosphere exchange, experiments using aircraft for flux measurements have yielded contributions to several large-scale studies including BOREAS, SMACEX, RECAB by providing local-to-regional coverage beyond towers. The low-altitude flight requirements make airborne flux measurements particularly dangerous and well suited for unmanned aircraft.

Impacts of spectral nudging on the simulated surface air temperature in summer compared with the selection of shortwave radiation and land surface model physics parameterization in a high-resolution regional atmospheric model

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jun; Hwang, Seung-On

2017-11-01

The impact of a spectral nudging technique for the dynamical downscaling of the summer surface air temperature in a high-resolution regional atmospheric model is assessed. The performance of this technique is measured by comparing 16 analysis-driven simulation sets of physical parameterization combinations of two shortwave radiation and four land surface model schemes of the model, which are known to be crucial for the simulation of the surface air temperature. It is found that the application of spectral nudging to the outermost domain has a greater impact on the regional climate than any combination of shortwave radiation and land surface model physics schemes. The optimal choice of two model physics parameterizations is helpful for obtaining more realistic spatiotemporal distributions of land surface variables such as the surface air temperature, precipitation, and surface fluxes. However, employing spectral nudging adds more value to the results; the improvement is greater than using sophisticated shortwave radiation and land surface model physical parameterizations. This result indicates that spectral nudging applied to the outermost domain provides a more accurate lateral boundary condition to the innermost domain when forced by analysis data by securing the consistency with large-scale forcing over a regional domain. This consequently indirectly helps two physical parameterizations to produce small-scale features closer to the observed values, leading to a better representation of the surface air temperature in a high-resolution downscaled climate.

Analysis of Anomaly in Land Surface Temperature Using MODIS Products

Science.gov (United States)

Yorozu, K.; Kodama, T.; Kim, S.; Tachikawa, Y.; Shiiba, M.

2011-12-01

Atmosphere-land surface interaction plays a dominant role on the hydrologic cycle. Atmospheric phenomena cause variation of land surface state and land surface state can affect on atmosphereic conditions. Widely-known article related in atmospheric-land interaction was published by Koster et al. in 2004. The context of this article is that seasonal anomaly in soil moisture or soil surface temperature can affect summer precipitation generation and other atmospheric processes especially in middle North America, Sahel and south Asia. From not only above example but other previous research works, it is assumed that anomaly of surface state has a key factor. To investigate atmospheric-land surface interaction, it is necessary to analyze anomaly field in land surface state. In this study, soil surface temperature should be focused because it can be globally and continuously observed by satellite launched sensor. To land surface temperature product, MOD11C1 and MYD11C1 products which are kinds of MODIS products are applied. Both of them have 0.05 degree spatial resolution and daily temporal resolution. The difference of them is launched satellite, MOD11C1 is Terra and MYD11C1 is Aqua. MOD11C1 covers the latter of 2000 to present and MYD11C1 covers the early 2002 to present. There are unrealistic values on provided products even if daily product was already calibrated or corrected. For pre-analyzing, daily data is aggregated into 8-days data to remove irregular values for stable analysis. It was found that there are spatial and temporal distribution of 10-years average and standard deviation for each 8-days term. In order to point out extreme anomaly in land surface temperature, standard score for each 8-days term is applied. From the analysis of standard score, it is found there are large anomaly in land surface temperature around north China plain in early April 2005 and around Bangladesh in early May 2009.

Incorporating JULES into NASA's Land Information System (LIS) and Investigations of Land-Atmosphere Coupling

Science.gov (United States)

Santanello, Joseph

2011-01-01

NASA's Land Information System (LIS; lis.gsfc.nasa.gov) is a flexible land surface modeling and data assimilation framework developed over the past decade with the goal of integrating satellite- and ground-based observational data products and advanced land surface modeling techniques to produce optimal fields of land surface states and fluxes. LIS features a high performance and flexible design, and operates on an ensemble of land surface models for extension over user-specified regional or global domains. The extensible interfaces of LIS allow the incorporation of new domains, land surface models (LSMs), land surface parameters, meteorological inputs, data assimilation and optimization algorithms. In addition, LIS has also been demonstrated for parameter estimation and uncertainty estimation, and has been coupled to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model. A visiting fellowship is currently underway to implement JULES into LIS and to undertake some fundamental science on the feedbacks between the land surface and the atmosphere. An overview of the LIS system, features, and sample results will be presented in an effort to engage the community in the potential advantages of LIS-JULES for a range of applications. Ongoing efforts to develop a framework for diagnosing land-atmosphere coupling will also be presented using the suite of LSM and PBL schemes available in LIS and WRF along with observations from the U. S .. Southern Great Plains. This methodology provides a potential pathway to study factors controlling local land-atmosphere coupling (LoCo) using the LIS-WRF system, which will serve as a testbed for future experiments to evaluate coupling diagnostics within the community.

Constraining the JULES land-surface model for different land-use types using citizen-science generated hydrological data

Science.gov (United States)

Chou, H. K.; Ochoa-Tocachi, B. F.; Buytaert, W.

2017-12-01

Community land surface models such as JULES are increasingly used for hydrological assessment because of their state-of-the-art representation of land-surface processes. However, a major weakness of JULES and other land surface models is the limited number of land surface parameterizations that is available. Therefore, this study explores the use of data from a network of catchments under homogeneous land-use to generate parameter "libraries" to extent the land surface parameterizations of JULES. The network (called iMHEA) is part of a grassroots initiative to characterise the hydrological response of different Andean ecosystems, and collects data on streamflow, precipitation, and several weather variables at a high temporal resolution. The tropical Andes are a useful case study because of the complexity of meteorological and geographical conditions combined with extremely heterogeneous land-use that result in a wide range of hydrological responses. We then calibrated JULES for each land-use represented in the iMHEA dataset. For the individual land-use types, the results show improved simulations of streamflow when using the calibrated parameters with respect to default values. In particular, the partitioning between surface and subsurface flows can be improved. But also, on a regional scale, hydrological modelling was greatly benefitted from constraining parameters using such distributed citizen-science generated streamflow data. This study demonstrates the modelling and prediction on regional hydrology by integrating citizen science and land surface model. In the context of hydrological study, the limitation of data scarcity could be solved indeed by using this framework. Improved predictions of such impacts could be leveraged by catchment managers to guide watershed interventions, to evaluate their effectiveness, and to minimize risks.

Elucidating Carbon Exchange at the Regional Scale Via Airborne Eddy Covariance Flux Measurements

Science.gov (United States)

Hannun, R. A.; Wolfe, G. M.; Kawa, S. R.; Newman, P. A.; Hanisco, T. F.; Diskin, G. S.; DiGangi, J. P.; Nowak, J. B.; Barrick, J. D. W.; Thornhill, K. L., II; Noormets, A.; Vargas, R.; Clark, K. L.; Kustas, W. P.

2017-12-01

Direct flux observations from aircraft provide a unique tool for probing greenhouse gas (GHG) sources and sinks on a regional scale. Airborne eddy covariance, which relies on high-frequency, simultaneous measurements of fluctuations in concentration and vertical wind speed, is a robust method for quantifying surface-atmosphere exchange. We have assembled and flown an instrument payload onboard the NASA C-23 Sherpa aircraft capable of measuring CO2, CH4, H2O, and heat fluxes. Flights for the Carbon Airborne Flux Experiment (CARAFE) took place during September 2016 and May 2017 based out of Wallops Flight Facility, VA. Flight tracks covered a variety of ecosystems and land-use types in the Mid-Atlantic, including forests, croplands, and wetlands. Carbon fluxes are derived using eddy covariance and wavelet analysis. Our results show a strong drawdown of CO2 and near-zero CH4 emissions from crops and dry-land forest, but seasonally strong CH4 flux from wetland forest. CARAFE flux data will also be compared with observations from several flux towers along the flight path to complement the airborne measurements. We will further assess the effects of land surface type and seasonal variability in carbon exchange. Regional-scale flux observations from CARAFE supply a useful constraint for improving top-down and bottom up estimates of carbon sources and sinks.

Turbulent flow over an interactive alternating land-water surface

Science.gov (United States)

Van Heerwaarden, C.; Mellado, J. P.

2014-12-01

The alternating land-water surface is a challenging surface to represent accurately in weather and climate models, but it is of great importance for the surface energy balance in polar regions. The complexity of this surface lies in the fact that secondary circulations, which form at the boundary of water and land, interact strongly with the surface energy balance. Due to its large heat capacity, the water temperature adapts slowly to the flow, thus the properties of the atmosphere determine the uptake of energy from the water. In order to study this complex system in a simpler way, retaining only the most essential physics, we have simplified the full surface energy balance including radiation. We have derived a boundary condition that mimics the full balance and can be formulated as a so-called Robin boundary condition: a linear combination of Dirichlet (fixed temperature) and Neumann (fixed temperature gradient) ones. By spatially varying the coefficients, we are able to express land and water using this boundary condition. We have done a series of direct numerical simulations in which we generate artificial land-water patterns from noise created from a Gaussian spectrum centered around a dominant wave number. This method creates realistic random patterns, but we are still in control of the length scales. We show that the system can manifest itself in three regimes: micro-, meso- and macro-scale. In the micro-scale, we find perfect mixing of the near-surface atmosphere that results in identical air properties over water and land. In the meso-scale, secondary circulations alter the heat exchange considerably by advecting air between land and water. In addition, they bring the surface temperature of the land closer to that of the air, thereby modulating the energy loss due to outgoing longwave radiation. In the macro-scale regime, the flow over land and water become independent of each other and only the large scale forcings determine the energy balance.

Plasma-surface interactions under high heat and particle fluxes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

De Temmerman, G.; Bystrov, K.; Liu, F.; Liu, W.; Morgan, T.; Tanyeli, I.; van den Berg, M.; Xu, H.; Zielinski, J.

2013-01-01

The plasma-surface interactions expected in the divertor of a future fusion reactor are characterized by extreme heat and particle fluxes interacting with the plasma-facing surfaces. Powerful linear plasma generators are used to reproduce the expected plasma conditions and allow plasma-surface

Quantifying the Trends in Land Surface Temperature and Surface Urban Heat Island Intensity in Mediterranean Cities in View of Smart Urbanization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anastasios Polydoros

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Land Surface Temperature (LST is a key parameter for the estimation of urban fluxes as well as for the assessment of the presence and strength of the surface urban heat island (SUHI. In an urban environment, LST depends on the way the city has been planned and developed over time. To this end, the estimation of LST needs adequate spatial and temporal data at the urban scale, especially with respect to land cover/land use. The present study is divided in two parts: at first, satellite data from MODIS-Terra 8-day product (MOD11A2 were used for the analysis of an eighteen-year time series (2001–2017 of the LST spatial and temporal distribution in five major cities of the Mediterranean during the summer months. LST trends were retrieved and assessed for their statistical significance. Secondly, LST values and trends for each city were examined in relation to land cover characteristics and patterns in order to define the contribution of urban development and planning on LST; this information is important for the drafting of smart urbanization policies and measures. Results revealed (a positive LST trends in the urban areas especially during nighttime ranging from +0.412 °K in Marseille to +0.923 °K in Cairo and (b the SUHI has intensified during the last eighteen years especially during daytime in European Mediterranean cities, such as Rome (+0.332 °K and Barcelona (+0.307 °K.

Understanding the behavior of carbon dioxide and surface energy fluxes in semiarid Salt Lake Valley, Utah, USA

Science.gov (United States)

Ramamurthy, Prathap

This dissertation reports the findings from the Salt Lake Valley flux study. The Salt Lake Valley flux study was designed to improve our understanding of the complex land-atmosphere interactions in urban areas. The flux study used the eddy covariance technique to quantify carbon dioxide and surface energy budget in the semiarid Salt Lake Valley. Apart from quantifying fluxes, the study has also added new insight into the nature of turbulent scalar transport in urban areas and has addressed some of the complications in using Eddy Covariance technique in urban areas. As part of this experiment, eddy fluxes of CO2 and surface energy fluxes were measured at two sites, with distinct urban landforms; One site was located in a suburban neighborhood with substantial vegetative cover, prototypical of many residential neighborhoods in the valley. The other CO2 site was in a preurban surrounding that resembled the Salt Lake Valley before it was urbanized. The two sites were intentionally chosen to illustrate the impact of urbanization on CO 2 and surface energy flux cycles. Results indicate that the suburban site acted as a sink of CO2 during the midday period due to photosynthesis and acted as a source of CO2 during the evening and nighttime periods. The vegetative cover around the suburban site also had a significant impact on the surface energy fluxes. Contribution from latent heat flux was substantially high at the suburban site during the summer months compared to sensible heat. The turbulence investigation found that the general behavior of turbulence was very much influenced by local factors and the statistics did not always obey Monin-Obukhov Similarity parameters. This investigation also found that the scalar (co)spectra observed at the suburban site were characterized by multiple peaks and were different compared to (co)spectra reported over forest and crop canopies. The study also observed multiscale CO2 transport at the suburban site during the convective period

Solar flux incident on an orbiting surface after reflection from a planet

Science.gov (United States)

Modest, M. F.

1980-01-01

Algorithms describing the solar radiation impinging on an infinitesimal surface after reflection from a gray and diffuse planet are derived. The following conditions apply: only radiation from the sunny half of the planet is taken into account; the radiation must fall on the top of the orbiting surface, and radiation must come from that part of the planet that can be seen from the orbiting body. A simple approximate formula is presented which displays excellent accuracy for all significant situations, with an error which is always less than 5% of the maximum possible reflected flux. Attention is also given to solar albedo flux on a surface directly facing the planet, the influence of solar position on albedo flux, and to solar albedo flux as a function of the surface-planet tilt angle.

Advancing land surface model development with satellite-based Earth observations

Science.gov (United States)

Orth, Rene; Dutra, Emanuel; Trigo, Isabel F.; Balsamo, Gianpaolo

2017-04-01

The land surface forms an essential part of the climate system. It interacts with the atmosphere through the exchange of water and energy and hence influences weather and climate, as well as their predictability. Correspondingly, the land surface model (LSM) is an essential part of any weather forecasting system. LSMs rely on partly poorly constrained parameters, due to sparse land surface observations. With the use of newly available land surface temperature observations, we show in this study that novel satellite-derived datasets help to improve LSM configuration, and hence can contribute to improved weather predictability. We use the Hydrology Tiled ECMWF Scheme of Surface Exchanges over Land (HTESSEL) and validate it comprehensively against an array of Earth observation reference datasets, including the new land surface temperature product. This reveals satisfactory model performance in terms of hydrology, but poor performance in terms of land surface temperature. This is due to inconsistencies of process representations in the model as identified from an analysis of perturbed parameter simulations. We show that HTESSEL can be more robustly calibrated with multiple instead of single reference datasets as this mitigates the impact of the structural inconsistencies. Finally, performing coupled global weather forecasts we find that a more robust calibration of HTESSEL also contributes to improved weather forecast skills. In summary, new satellite-based Earth observations are shown to enhance the multi-dataset calibration of LSMs, thereby improving the representation of insufficiently captured processes, advancing weather predictability and understanding of climate system feedbacks. Orth, R., E. Dutra, I. F. Trigo, and G. Balsamo (2016): Advancing land surface model development with satellite-based Earth observations. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., doi:10.5194/hess-2016-628

An extended rational thermodynamics model for surface excess fluxes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sagis, L.M.C.

2012-01-01

In this paper, we derive constitutive equations for the surface excess fluxes in multiphase systems, in the context of an extended rational thermodynamics formalism. This formalism allows us to derive Maxwell–Cattaneo type constitutive laws for the surface extra stress tensor, the surface thermal

Aram Chaos and its constraints on the surface heat flux of Mars

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schumacher, S.; Zegers, T.E.

2011-01-01

The surface heat flux of a planet is an important parameter to characterize its internal activity and to determine its thermal evolution. Here we report on a new method to constrain the surface heat flux of Mars during the Hesperian. For this, we explore the consequences for the martian surface

Land Use Effects on Net Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in the US Great Plains: Historical Trends and Model Projections

Science.gov (United States)

Del Grosso, S. J.; Parton, W. J.; Ojima, D. S.; Mosier, A. R.; Mosier, A. R.; Paustian, K.; Peterson, G. A.

2001-12-01

We present maps showing regional patterns of land use change and soil C levels in the US Great Plains during the 20th century and time series of net greenhouse gas fluxes associated with different land uses. Net greenhouse gas fluxes were calculated by accounting for soil CO2 fluxes, the CO2 equivalents of N2O emissions and CH4 uptake, and the CO2 costs of N fertilizer production. Both historical and modern agriculture in this region have been net sources of greenhouse gases. The primary reason for this, prior to 1950, is that agriculture mined soil C and resulted in net CO2 emissions. When chemical N fertilizer became widely used in the 1950's agricultural soils began to sequester CO2-C but these soils were still net greenhouse gas sources if the effects of increased N2O emissions and decreased CH4 uptake are included. The sensitivity of net greenhouse gas fluxes to conventional and alternative land uses was explored using the DAYCENT ecosystem model. Model projections suggest that conversion to no-till, reduction of the fallow period, and use of nitrification inhibitors can significantly decrease net greenhouse gas emissions in dryland and irrigated systems, while maintaining or increasing crop yields.

Advancing land surface model development with satellite-based Earth observations

Science.gov (United States)

Orth, Rene; Dutra, Emanuel; Trigo, Isabel F.; Balsamo, Gianpaolo

2017-05-01

The land surface forms an essential part of the climate system. It interacts with the atmosphere through the exchange of water and energy and hence influences weather and climate, as well as their predictability. Correspondingly, the land surface model (LSM) is an essential part of any weather forecasting system. LSMs rely on partly poorly constrained parameters, due to sparse land surface observations. With the use of newly available land surface temperature observations, we show in this study that novel satellite-derived datasets help improve LSM configuration, and hence can contribute to improved weather predictability. We use the Hydrology Tiled ECMWF Scheme of Surface Exchanges over Land (HTESSEL) and validate it comprehensively against an array of Earth observation reference datasets, including the new land surface temperature product. This reveals satisfactory model performance in terms of hydrology but poor performance in terms of land surface temperature. This is due to inconsistencies of process representations in the model as identified from an analysis of perturbed parameter simulations. We show that HTESSEL can be more robustly calibrated with multiple instead of single reference datasets as this mitigates the impact of the structural inconsistencies. Finally, performing coupled global weather forecasts, we find that a more robust calibration of HTESSEL also contributes to improved weather forecast skills. In summary, new satellite-based Earth observations are shown to enhance the multi-dataset calibration of LSMs, thereby improving the representation of insufficiently captured processes, advancing weather predictability, and understanding of climate system feedbacks.

Modelling and analysis of flux surface mapping experiments on W7-X

Science.gov (United States)

Lazerson, Samuel; Otte, Matthias; Bozhenkov, Sergey; Sunn Pedersen, Thomas; Bräuer, Torsten; Gates, David; Neilson, Hutch; W7-X Team

2015-11-01

The measurement and compensation of error fields in W7-X will be key to the device achieving high beta steady state operations. Flux surface mapping utilizes the vacuum magnetic flux surfaces, a feature unique to stellarators and heliotrons, to allow direct measurement of magnetic topology, and thereby allows a highly accurate determination of remnant magnetic field errors. As will be reported separately at this meeting, the first measurements confirming the existence of nested flux surfaces in W7-X have been made. In this presentation, a synthetic diagnostic for the flux surface mapping diagnostic is presented. It utilizes Poincaré traces to construct an image of the flux surface consistent with the measured camera geometry, fluorescent rod sweep plane, and emitter beam position. Forward modeling of the high-iota configuration will be presented demonstrating an ability to measure the intrinsic error field using the U.S. supplied trim coil system on W7-X, and a first experimental assessment of error fields in W7-X will be presented. This work has been authored by Princeton University under Contract Number DE-AC02-09CH11466 with the US Department of Energy.

Land management and land-cover change have impacts of similar magnitude on surface temperature

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Luyssaert, Sebastiaan; Jammet, Mathilde; Stoy, Paul C.

2014-01-01

Anthropogenic changes to land cover (LCC) remain common, but continuing land scarcity promotes the widespread intensification of land management changes (LMC) to better satisfy societal demand for food, fibre, fuel and shelter1. The biophysical effects of LCC on surface climate are largely unders...

Using radiometric surface temperature for surface energy flux estimation in Mediterranean drylands from a two-source perspective

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Morillas, L.; Garcia Garcia, Monica; Nieto Solana, Hector

2013-01-01

A two-source model (TSM) for surface energy balance, considering explicitly soil and vegetation components, was tested under water stress conditions. The TSM evaluated estimates the sensible heat flux (H) using the surface-air thermal gradient and the latent heat flux (LE) as a residual from the ...

Estimates of Soil Moisture Using the Land Information System for Land Surface Water Storage: Case Study for the Western States Water Mission

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, P. W.; Famiglietti, J. S.; Levoe, S.; Reager, J. T., II; David, C. H.; Kumar, S.; Li, B.; Peters-Lidard, C. D.

2017-12-01

Soil moisture is one of the critical factors in terrestrial hydrology. Accurate soil moisture information improves estimation of terrestrial water storage and fluxes, that is essential for water resource management including sustainable groundwater pumping and agricultural irrigation practices. It is particularly important during dry periods when water stress is high. The Western States Water Mission (WSWM), a multiyear mission project of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is operated to understand and estimate quantities of the water availability in the western United States by integrating observations and measurements from in-situ and remote sensing sensors, and hydrological models. WSWM data products have been used to assess and explore the adverse impacts of the California drought (2011-2016) and provide decision-makers information for water use planning. Although the observations are often more accurate, simulations using land surface models can provide water availability estimates at desired spatio-temporal scales. The Land Information System (LIS), developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, integrates developed land surface models and data processing and management tools, that enables to utilize the measurements and observations from various platforms as forcings in the high performance computing environment to forecast the hydrologic conditions. The goal of this study is to implement the LIS in the western United States for estimates of soil moisture. We will implement the NOAH-MP model at the 12km North America Land Data Assimilation System grid and compare to other land surface models included in the LIS. Findings will provide insight into the differences between model estimates and model physics. Outputs from a multi-model ensemble from LIS can also be used to enhance estimated reliability and provide quantification of uncertainty. We will compare the LIS-based soil moisture estimates to the SMAP enhanced 9 km soil moisture product to understand the

KoFlux: Korean Regional Flux Network in AsiaFlux

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, J.

2002-12-01

AsiaFlux, the Asian arm of FLUXNET, held the Second International Workshop on Advanced Flux Network and Flux Evaluation in Jeju Island, Korea on 9-11 January 2002. In order to facilitate comprehensive Asia-wide studies of ecosystem fluxes, the meeting launched KoFlux, a new Korean regional network of long-term micrometeorological flux sites. For a successful assessment of carbon exchange between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, an accurate measurement of surface fluxes of energy and water is one of the prerequisites. During the 7th Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Asian Monsoon Experiment (GAME) held in Nagoya, Japan on 1-2 October 2001, the Implementation Committee of the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP) was established. One of the immediate tasks of CEOP was and is to identify the reference sites to monitor energy and water fluxes over the Asian continent. Subsequently, to advance the regional and global network of these reference sites in the context of both FLUXNET and CEOP, the Korean flux community has re-organized the available resources to establish a new regional network, KoFlux. We have built up domestic network sites (equipped with wind profiler and radiosonde measurements) over deciduous and coniferous forests, urban and rural rice paddies and coastal farmland. As an outreach through collaborations with research groups in Japan, China and Thailand, we also proposed international flux sites at ecologically and climatologically important locations such as a prairie on the Tibetan plateau, tropical forest with mixed and rapid land use change in northern Thailand. Several sites in KoFlux already begun to accumulate interesting data and some highlights are presented at the meeting. The sciences generated by flux networks in other continents have proven the worthiness of a global array of micrometeorological flux towers. It is our intent that the launch of KoFlux would encourage other scientists to initiate and

Integrating ASCAT surface soil moisture and GEOV1 leaf area index into the SURFEX modelling platform: a land data assimilation application over France

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. L. Barbu

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The land monitoring service of the European Copernicus programme has developed a set of satellite-based biogeophysical products, including surface soil moisture (SSM and leaf area index (LAI. This study investigates the impact of joint assimilation of remotely sensed SSM derived from Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT backscatter data and the Copernicus Global Land GEOV1 satellite-based LAI product into the the vegetation growth version of the Interactions between Soil Biosphere Atmosphere (ISBA-A-gs land surface model within the the externalised surface model (SURFEX modelling platform of Météo-France. The ASCAT data were bias corrected with respect to the model climatology by using a seasonal-based CDF (Cumulative Distribution Function matching technique. A multivariate multi-scale land data assimilation system (LDAS based on the extended Kalman Filter (EKF is used for monitoring the soil moisture, terrestrial vegetation, surface carbon and energy fluxes across the domain of France at a spatial resolution of 8 km. Each model grid box is divided into a number of land covers, each having its own set of prognostic variables. The filter algorithm is designed to provide a distinct analysis for each land cover while using one observation per grid box. The updated values are aggregated by computing a weighted average. In this study, it is demonstrated that the assimilation scheme works effectively within the ISBA-A-gs model over a four-year period (2008–2011. The EKF is able to extract useful information from the data signal at the grid scale and distribute the root-zone soil moisture and LAI increments throughout the mosaic structure of the model. The impact of the assimilation on the vegetation phenology and on the water and carbon fluxes varies from one season to another. The spring drought of 2011 is an interesting case study of the potential of the assimilation to improve drought monitoring. A comparison between simulated and in situ soil

Surface radiant flux densities inferred from LAC and GAC AVHRR data

Science.gov (United States)

Berger, F.; Klaes, D.

To infer surface radiant flux densities from current (NOAA-AVHRR, ERS-1/2 ATSR) and future meteorological (Envisat AATSR, MSG, METOP) satellite data, the complex, modular analysis scheme SESAT (Strahlungs- und Energieflüsse aus Satellitendaten) could be developed (Berger, 2001). This scheme allows the determination of cloud types, optical and microphysical cloud properties as well as surface and TOA radiant flux densities. After testing of SESAT in Central Europe and the Baltic Sea catchment (more than 400scenes U including a detailed validation with various surface measurements) it could be applied to a large number of NOAA-16 AVHRR overpasses covering the globe.For the analysis, two different spatial resolutions U local area coverage (LAC) andwere considered. Therefore, all inferred results, like global area coverage (GAC) U cloud cover, cloud properties and radiant properties, could be intercompared. Specific emphasis could be made to the surface radiant flux densities (all radiative balance compoments), where results for different regions, like Southern America, Southern Africa, Northern America, Europe, and Indonesia, will be presented. Applying SESAT, energy flux densities, like latent and sensible heat flux densities could also be determined additionally. A statistical analysis of all results including a detailed discussion for the two spatial resolutions will close this study.

Land Surface Model (LSM 1.0) for Ecological, Hydrological, Atmospheric Studies

Data.gov (United States)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The NCAR LSM 1.0 is a land surface model developed to examine biogeophysical and biogeochemical land-atmosphere interactions, especially the effects of land surfaces...

Regional seasonal warming anomalies and land-surface feedbacks

Science.gov (United States)

Coffel, E.; Horton, R. M.

2017-12-01

Significant seasonal variations in warming are projected in some regions, especially central Europe, the southeastern U.S., and central South America. Europe in particular may experience up to 2°C more warming during June, July, and August than in the annual mean, enhancing the risk of extreme summertime heat. Previous research has shown that heat waves in Europe and other regions are tied to seasonal soil moisture variations, and that in general land-surface feedbacks have a strong effect on seasonal temperature anomalies. In this study, we show that the seasonal anomalies in warming are also due in part to land-surface feedbacks. We find that in regions with amplified warming during the hot season, surface soil moisture levels generally decline and Bowen ratios increase as a result of a preferential partitioning of incoming energy into sensible vs. latent. The CMIP5 model suite shows significant variability in the strength of land-atmosphere coupling and in projections of future precipitation and soil moisture. Due to the dependence of seasonal warming on land-surface processes, these inter-model variations influence the projected summertime warming amplification and contribute to the uncertainty in projections of future extreme heat.

Energy and water fluxes above a cacao agroforestry system in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, indicate effects of land-use change on local climate

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Falk, U.; Ibrom, A.; Oltchev, A.; Kreilein, H.; Merklein, J.; Gravenhorst, G. [Inst. of Bioclimatology, Univ. Goettingen (Germany); June, T. [Inst. Pertanian Bogor, BIOTROP-ICSEA, Bogor (Indonesia); Rauf, A. [Univ. Tadulako, Palu (Indonesia)

2005-04-01

Rapid conversion of tropical rainforests to agricultural land-use types occurs throughout Indonesia and South-East Asia. We hypothesize that these changes in land-use affect the turbulent heat exchange processes between vegetation and the atmosphere, and the radiative properties of the surface, and therefore, induce an impact on local climate and water flows. As part of the international research project (SFB 552, Stability of Rainforest Margins in Indonesia, STORMA) the turbulent heat fluxes over a cacao agroforestry system (AFS) were investigated, using the eddy covariance technique. These first heat flux observations above a cacao AFS showed an unexpectedly large contribution of the sensible heat flux to the total turbulent heat transport, resulting in an averaged day-time Bowen ratio of {beta} = H/{lambda}E {approx} 1. Seasonality of {beta} did mainly coincide with the seasonal course of precipitation, which amounted to 1970 mm yr{sup -1} during the investigated period. The findings are compared to investigations at four neotropical rain forests where daytime {beta} were substantially smaller than 1. All discussed sites received similar incident short wave radiation, however, precipitation at the neotropical sites was much higher. Our first observations in a nearby Indonesian upland rain forest where precipitation was comparable to that at the cacao AFS showed an intermediate behaviour. Differences in {beta} between the cacao AFS and the tropical forests are discussed as a consequence of differing precipitation amounts, and albedo. From these comparisons we conclude that conversion from tropical forests to cacao AFS affects the energy fluxes towards increased heating of the day-time convective boundary-layer. (orig.)

Surface fluxes in heterogeneous landscape

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bay Hasager, C

1997-01-01

The surface fluxes in homogeneous landscapes are calculated by similarity scaling principles. The methodology is well establish. In heterogeneous landscapes with spatial changes in the micro scale range, i e from 100 m to 10 km, advective effects are significant. The present work focus on these effects in an agricultural countryside typical for the midlatitudes. Meteorological and satellite data from a highly heterogeneous landscape in the Rhine Valley, Germany was collected in the large-scale field experiment TRACT (Transport of pollutants over complex terrain) in 1992. Classified satellite images, Landsat TM and ERS SAR, are used as basis for roughness maps. The roughnesses were measured at meteorological masts in the various cover classes and assigned pixel by pixel to the images. The roughness maps are aggregated, i e spatially averaged, into so-called effective roughness lengths. This calculation is performed by a micro scale aggregation model. The model solves the linearized atmospheric flow equations by a numerical (Fast Fourier Transform) method. This model also calculate maps of friction velocity and momentum flux pixel wise in heterogeneous landscapes. It is indicated how the aggregation methodology can be used to calculate the heat fluxes based on the relevant satellite data i e temperature and soil moisture information. (au) 10 tabs., 49 ills., 223 refs.

Land-surface modelling in hydrological perspective

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Overgaard, Jesper; Rosbjerg, Dan; Butts, M.B.

2006-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the different types of energy-based land-surface models (LSMs) and discuss some of the new possibilities that will arise when energy-based LSMs are combined with distributed hydrological modelling. We choose to focus on energy-based approaches......, and the difficulties inherent in various evaluation procedures are presented. Finally, the dynamic coupling of hydrological and atmospheric models is explored, and the perspectives of such efforts are discussed......., because in comparison to the traditional potential evapotranspiration models, these approaches allow for a stronger link to remote sensing and atmospheric modelling. New opportunities for evaluation of distributed land-surface models through application of remote sensing are discussed in detail...

Numerical Study on the Effect of Air–Sea–Land Interaction on the Atmospheric Boundary Layer in Coastal Area

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zixuan Yang

2018-02-01

Full Text Available We have performed large-eddy simulations (LES to study the effect of complex land topography on the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL in coastal areas. The areas under investigation are located at three beaches in Monterey Bay, CA, USA. The sharp-interface immersed boundary method is employed to resolve the land topography down to grid scale. We have considered real-time and what-if cases. In the real-time cases, measurement data and realistic land topographies are directly incorporated. In the what-if cases, the effects of different scenarios of wind speed, wind direction, and terrain pattern on the momentum flux at the beach are studied. The LES results are compared with simulations using the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS and field measurement data. We find that the land topography imposes a critical influence on the ABL in the coastal area. The momentum fluxes obtained from our LES agree with measurement data. Our results indicate the importance of capturing the effects of land topographies in simulations.

Methane oxidation and methane fluxes in the ocean surface layer and deep anoxic waters

Science.gov (United States)

Ward, B. B.; Kilpatrick, K. A.; Novelli, P. C.; Scranton, M. I.

1987-01-01

Measured biological oxidation rates of methane in near-surface waters of the Cariaco Basin are compared with the diffusional fluxes computed from concentration gradients of methane in the surface layer. Methane fluxes and oxidation rates were investigated in surface waters, at the oxic/anoxic interface, and in deep anoxic waters. It is shown that the surface-waters oxidation of methane is a mechanism which modulates the flux of methane from marine waters to the atmosphere.

The investigation of spatiotemporal variations of land surface temperature based on land use changes using NDVI in southwest of Iran

Science.gov (United States)

Fathizad, Hassan; Tazeh, Mahdi; Kalantari, Saeideh; Shojaei, Saeed

2017-10-01

Land use changes can bring about changes in land surface temperature (LST) which is influenced by climatic conditions and physical characteristics of the land surface. In this study, spatiotemporal variations of land surface temperature have been investigated in the desert area of Dasht-e-Abbas, Ilam, based on a variety of land use changes. The investigated periods for the study include 1990, 2000 and 2010 using Landsat image data. First, in mapping land use we used the Fuzzy ARTMAP Neural Network Classification method followed by determination of the NDVI Index to estimate land surface temperature. The results show an increase in LST in areas where degradation, land use and land cover changes have occurred. In 1990, 2000 and 2010, the average land surface temperature of the Fair Rangelands was 26.72 °C, 30.06 °C and 30.95 °C, respectively. This rangeland has been reduced by about 5%. For poor rangelands, the average LSTs were 26.95, 32.83 and 34.49 Cº, respectively which had a 18% reduction. In 1990, 2000 and 2010, the average land surface temperatures of agricultural lands were 24.31 °C, 27.87 °C and 28.61 °C, respectively which has been an increasing trend. The reason can be attributed to changes in cropping patterns of the study area.

Towards a Near Real-Time Satellite-Based Flux Monitoring System for the MENA Region

Science.gov (United States)

Ershadi, A.; Houborg, R.; McCabe, M. F.; Anderson, M. C.; Hain, C.

2013-12-01

Satellite remote sensing has the potential to offer spatially and temporally distributed information on land surface characteristics, which may be used as inputs and constraints for estimating land surface fluxes of carbon, water and energy. Enhanced satellite-based monitoring systems for aiding local water resource assessments and agricultural management activities are particularly needed for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The MENA region is an area characterized by limited fresh water resources, an often inefficient use of these, and relatively poor in-situ monitoring as a result of sparse meteorological observations. To address these issues, an integrated modeling approach for near real-time monitoring of land surface states and fluxes at fine spatio-temporal scales over the MENA region is presented. This approach is based on synergistic application of multiple sensors and wavebands in the visible to shortwave infrared and thermal infrared (TIR) domain. The multi-scale flux mapping and monitoring system uses the Atmosphere-Land Exchange Inverse (ALEXI) model and associated flux disaggregation scheme (DisALEXI), and the Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM) in conjunction with model reanalysis data and multi-sensor remotely sensed data from polar orbiting (e.g. Landsat and MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)) and geostationary (MSG; Meteosat Second Generation) satellite platforms to facilitate time-continuous (i.e. daily) estimates of field-scale water, energy and carbon fluxes. Within this modeling system, TIR satellite data provide information about the sub-surface moisture status and plant stress, obviating the need for precipitation input and a detailed soil surface characterization (i.e. for prognostic modeling of soil transport processes). The STARFM fusion methodology blends aspects of high frequency (spatially coarse) and spatially fine resolution sensors and is applied directly to flux output

Heat Flux of a Transferred Arc Driven by a Transverse Magnetic Field

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Naomi Matsumoto

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Theoretical consideration of a magnetically driven arc was performed to elucidate the variation of heat flux with an imposed DC magnetic field. Experiments were conducted to confirm the validity of the theoretical model. The heat flux decreased concomitantly with increased imposed magnetic flux density. Theoretical predictions agreed with experimental results.

Surface heterogeneity impacts on boundary layer dynamics via energy balance partitioning

Science.gov (United States)

The role of land-atmosphere interactions under heterogeneous surface conditions is investigated in order to identify mechanisms responsible for altering surface heat and moisture fluxes. Twelve coupled land surface – large eddy simulation scenarios with four different length scales of surface variab...

Impacts of land use and land cover on surface and air temperature in urban landscapes

Science.gov (United States)

Crum, S.; Jenerette, D.

2015-12-01

Accelerating urbanization affects regional climate as the result of changing land cover and land use (LCLU). Urban land cover composition may provide valuable insight into relationships among urbanization, air, and land-surface temperature (Ta and LST, respectively). Climate may alter these relationships, where hotter climates experience larger LULC effects. To address these hypotheses we examined links between Ta, LST, LCLU, and vegetation across an urban coastal to desert climate gradient in southern California, USA. Using surface temperature radiometers, continuously measuring LST on standardized asphalt, concrete, and turf grass surfaces across the climate gradient, we found a 7.2°C and 4.6°C temperature decrease from asphalt to vegetated cover in the coast and desert, respectively. There is 131% more temporal variation in asphalt than turf grass surfaces, but 37% less temporal variation in concrete than turf grass. For concrete and turf grass surfaces, temporal variation in temperature increased from coast to desert. Using ground-based thermal imagery, measuring LST for 24 h sequences over citrus orchard and industrial use locations, we found a 14.5°C temperature decrease from industrial to orchard land use types (38.4°C and 23.9°C, respectively). Additionally, industrial land use types have 209% more spatial variation than orchard (CV=0.20 and 0.09, respectively). Using a network of 300 Ta (iButton) sensors mounted in city street trees throughout the region and hyperspectral imagery data we found urban vegetation greenness, measured using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), was negatively correlated to Ta at night across the climate gradient. Contrasting previous findings, the closest coupling between NDVI and Ta is at the coast from 0000 h to 0800 h (highest r2 = 0.6, P urbanized regions of southern California, USA decrease Ta and LST and spatial variation in LST, while built surfaces and land uses have the opposite effect. Furthermore

Using Land Surface Phenology to Detect Land Use Change in the Northern Great Plains

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen, L. H.; Henebry, G. M.

2017-12-01

The Northern Great Plains of the US have been undergoing many types of land cover / land use change over the past two decades, including expansion of irrigation, conversion of grassland to cropland, biofuels production, urbanization, and fossil fuel mining. Much of the literature on these changes has relied on post-classification change detection based on a limited number of observations per year. Here we demonstrate an approach to characterize land dynamics through land surface phenology (LSP) by synergistic use of image time series at two scales. Our study areas include regions of interest (ROIs) across the Northern Great Plains located within Landsat path overlap zones to boost the number of valid observations (free of clouds or snow) each year. We first compute accumulated growing degree-days (AGDD) from MODIS 8-day composites of land surface temperature (MOD11A2 and MYD11A2). Using Landsat Collection 1 surface reflectance-derived vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI), we then fit at each pixel a downward convex quadratic model linking the vegetation index to each year's progression of AGDD. This quadratic equation exhibits linearity in a mathematical sense; thus, the fitted models can be linearly mixed and unmixed using a set of LSP endmembers (defined by the fitted parameter coefficients of the quadratic model) that represent "pure" land cover types with distinct seasonal patterns found within the region, such as winter wheat, spring wheat, maize, soybean, sunflower, hay/pasture/grassland, developed/built-up, among others. Information about land cover corresponding to each endmember are provided by the NLCD (National Land Cover Dataset) and CDL (Cropland Data Layer). We use linear unmixing to estimate the likely proportion of each LSP endmember within particular areas stratified by latitude. By tracking the proportions over the 2001-2011 period, we can quantify various types of land transitions in the Northern Great Plains.

Flux surface shape and current profile optimization in tokamaks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dobrott, D.R.; Miller, R.L.

1977-01-01

Axisymmetric tokamak equilibria of noncircular cross section are analyzed numerically to study the effects of flux surface shape and current profile on ideal and resistive interchange stability. Various current profiles are examined for circles, ellipses, dees, and doublets. A numerical code separately analyzes stability in the neighborhood of the magnetic axis and in the remainder of the plasma using the criteria of Mercier and Glasser, Greene, and Johnson. Results are interpreted in terms of flux surface averaged quantities such as magnetic well, shear, and the spatial variation in the magnetic field energy density over the cross section. The maximum stable β is found to vary significantly with shape and current profile. For current profiles varying linearly with poloidal flux, the highest β's found were for doublets. Finally, an algorithm is presented which optimizes the current profile for circles and dees by making the plasma everywhere marginally stable

Understanding Mesoscale Land-Atmosphere Interactions in Arctic Region

Science.gov (United States)

Hong, X.; Wang, S.; Nachamkin, J. E.

2017-12-01

Land-atmosphere interactions in Arctic region are examined using the U.S. Navy Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS©*) with the Noah Land Surface Model (LSM). Initial land surface variables in COAMPS are interpolated from the real-time NASA Land Information System (LIS). The model simulations are configured for three nest grids with 27-9-3 km horizontal resolutions. The simulation period is set for October 2015 with 12-h data assimilation update cycle and 24-h integration length. The results are compared with those simulated without using LSM and evaluated with observations from ONR Sea State R/V Sikuliaq cruise and the North Slope of Alaska (NSA). There are complex soil and vegetation types over the surface for simulation with LSM, compared to without LSM simulation. The results show substantial differences in surface heat fluxes between bulk surface scheme and LSM, which may have an important impact on the sea ice evolution over the Arctic region. Evaluations from station data show surface air temperature and relative humidity have smaller biases for simulation using LSM. Diurnal variation of land surface temperature, which is necessary for physical processes of land-atmosphere, is also better captured than without LSM.

Adapting observationally based metrics of biogeophysical feedbacks from land cover/land use change to climate modeling

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen, Liang; Dirmeyer, Paul A

2016-01-01

To assess the biogeophysical impacts of land cover/land use change (LCLUC) on surface temperature, two observation-based metrics and their applicability in climate modeling were explored in this study. Both metrics were developed based on the surface energy balance, and provided insight into the contribution of different aspects of land surface change (such as albedo, surface roughness, net radiation and surface heat fluxes) to changing climate. A revision of the first metric, the intrinsic biophysical mechanism, can be used to distinguish the direct and indirect effects of LCLUC on surface temperature. The other, a decomposed temperature metric, gives a straightforward depiction of separate contributions of all components of the surface energy balance. These two metrics well capture observed and model simulated surface temperature changes in response to LCLUC. Results from paired FLUXNET sites and land surface model sensitivity experiments indicate that surface roughness effects usually dominate the direct biogeophysical feedback of LCLUC, while other effects play a secondary role. However, coupled climate model experiments show that these direct effects can be attenuated by large scale atmospheric changes (indirect feedbacks). When applied to real-time transient LCLUC experiments, the metrics also demonstrate usefulness for assessing the performance of climate models and quantifying land–atmosphere interactions in response to LCLUC. (letter)

Evaluating the effect of alternative carbon allocation schemes in a land surface model (CLM4.5) on carbon fluxes, pools, and turnover in temperate forests

Science.gov (United States)

Montané, Francesc; Fox, Andrew M.; Arellano, Avelino F.; MacBean, Natasha; Alexander, M. Ross; Dye, Alex; Bishop, Daniel A.; Trouet, Valerie; Babst, Flurin; Hessl, Amy E.; Pederson, Neil; Blanken, Peter D.; Bohrer, Gil; Gough, Christopher M.; Litvak, Marcy E.; Novick, Kimberly A.; Phillips, Richard P.; Wood, Jeffrey D.; Moore, David J. P.

2017-09-01

How carbon (C) is allocated to different plant tissues (leaves, stem, and roots) determines how long C remains in plant biomass and thus remains a central challenge for understanding the global C cycle. We used a diverse set of observations (AmeriFlux eddy covariance tower observations, biomass estimates from tree-ring data, and leaf area index (LAI) measurements) to compare C fluxes, pools, and LAI data with those predicted by a land surface model (LSM), the Community Land Model (CLM4.5). We ran CLM4.5 for nine temperate (including evergreen and deciduous) forests in North America between 1980 and 2013 using four different C allocation schemes: i. dynamic C allocation scheme (named "D-CLM4.5") with one dynamic allometric parameter, which allocates C to the stem and leaves to vary in time as a function of annual net primary production (NPP); ii. an alternative dynamic C allocation scheme (named "D-Litton"), where, similar to (i), C allocation is a dynamic function of annual NPP, but unlike (i) includes two dynamic allometric parameters involving allocation to leaves, stem, and coarse roots; iii.-iv. a fixed C allocation scheme with two variants, one representative of observations in evergreen (named "F-Evergreen") and the other of observations in deciduous forests (named "F-Deciduous"). D-CLM4.5 generally overestimated gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration, and underestimated net ecosystem exchange (NEE). In D-CLM4.5, initial aboveground biomass in 1980 was largely overestimated (between 10 527 and 12 897 g C m-2) for deciduous forests, whereas aboveground biomass accumulation through time (between 1980 and 2011) was highly underestimated (between 1222 and 7557 g C m-2) for both evergreen and deciduous sites due to a lower stem turnover rate in the sites than the one used in the model. D-CLM4.5 overestimated LAI in both evergreen and deciduous sites because the leaf C-LAI relationship in the model did not match the observed leaf C

Validation of Land Surface Temperature from Sentinel-3

Science.gov (United States)

Ghent, D.

2017-12-01

One of the main objectives of the Sentinel-3 mission is to measure sea- and land-surface temperature with high-end accuracy and reliability in support of environmental and climate monitoring in an operational context. Calibration and validation are thus key criteria for operationalization within the framework of the Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Centre (S3MPC). Land surface temperature (LST) has a long heritage of satellite observations which have facilitated our understanding of land surface and climate change processes, such as desertification, urbanization, deforestation and land/atmosphere coupling. These observations have been acquired from a variety of satellite instruments on platforms in both low-earth orbit and in geostationary orbit. Retrieval accuracy can be a challenge though; surface emissivities can be highly variable owing to the heterogeneity of the land, and atmospheric effects caused by the presence of aerosols and by water vapour absorption can give a bias to the underlying LST. As such, a rigorous validation is critical in order to assess the quality of the data and the associated uncertainties. Validation of the level-2 SL_2_LST product, which became freely available on an operational basis from 5th July 2017 builds on an established validation protocol for satellite-based LST. This set of guidelines provides a standardized framework for structuring LST validation activities. The protocol introduces a four-pronged approach which can be summarised thus: i) in situ validation where ground-based observations are available; ii) radiance-based validation over sites that are homogeneous in emissivity; iii) intercomparison with retrievals from other satellite sensors; iv) time-series analysis to identify artefacts on an interannual time-scale. This multi-dimensional approach is a necessary requirement for assessing the performance of the LST algorithm for the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) which is designed around biome

Effects of land use on the timing and magnitude of dissolved organic carbon and nitrate fluxes: a regional analysis of high-frequency sensor measurements from forested, agricultural, and urban watersheds

Science.gov (United States)

Seybold, E. C.; Gold, A.; Inamdar, S. P.; Pradhanang, S. M.; Bowden, W. B.; Vaughan, M.; Addy, K.; Shanley, J. B.; Andrew, V.; Sleeper, R.; Levia, D. F., Jr.; Adair, C.; Wemple, B. C.; Schroth, A. W.

2017-12-01

Land use/land cover change has been shown to have significant impacts on nutrient loading to aquatic systems, and has been linked to coastal zone hypoxia and eutrophication of lake ecosystems. While it is clear that changes in land use/land cover are associated with changes in aquatic ecosystem function, a mechanistic understanding of how nutrient fluxes from distinct land cover classes respond to hydrologic events on event and seasonal scales remains unknown. Recent advances in the availability of high-frequency water quality sensors provide an opportunity to assess these relationships at a high temporal resolution. We deployed a network of in-situ spectrophotometers in watersheds with predominantly forested, agricultural, and urban land uses that spanned a latitudinal gradient in the northeastern US from Vermont to Delaware. Our study sought to assess how land cover affected the timing and magnitude of fluxes of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) from watersheds with distinct land uses, and to determine whether these relationships varied regionally. We found systematic differences in the timing and magnitude of C and N fluxes and strong variation in the annual mass fluxes from these distinct land cover classes. In particular, we found that while the phenology of C and N fluxes varied across land uses, there were distinct regional similarities in the C and N flux regimes within a given land use class. We also found strong inter-annual variability in carbon and nitrogen fluxes in response to inter-annual variability in precipitation and discharge, suggesting a high degree of hydrologic control over nutrient loading. These findings also emphasize the potential for climate change, and in particular precipitation variability, to drive strong variation in the magnitude of downstream nutrient flux to receiving lakes and estuaries. Our study emphasizes the pervasive influence of land cover and its effects on water quality, and also highlights the strong signature of

The Surface Radiation Budget over Oceans and Continents.

Science.gov (United States)

Garratt, J. R.; Prata, A. J.; Rotstayn, L. D.; McAvaney, B. J.; Cusack, S.

1998-08-01

An updated evaluation of the surface radiation budget in climate models (1994-96 versions; seven datasets available, with and without aerosols) and in two new satellite-based global datasets (with aerosols) is presented. All nine datasets capture the broad mean monthly zonal variations in the flux components and in the net radiation, with maximum differences of some 100 W m2 occurring in the downwelling fluxes at specific latitudes. Using long-term surface observations, both from land stations and the Pacific warm pool (with typical uncertainties in the annual values varying between ±5 and 20 W m2), excess net radiation (RN) and downwelling shortwave flux density (So) are found in all datasets, consistent with results from earlier studies [for global land, excesses of 15%-20% (12 W m2) in RN and about 12% (20 W m2) in So]. For the nine datasets combined, the spread in annual fluxes is significant: for RN, it is 15 (50) W m2 over global land (Pacific warm pool) in an observed annual mean of 65 (135) W m2; for So, it is 25 (60) W m2 over land (warm pool) in an annual mean of 176 (197) W m2.The effects of aerosols are included in three of the authors' datasets, based on simple aerosol climatologies and assumptions regarding aerosol optical properties. They offer guidance on the broad impact of aerosols on climate, suggesting that the inclusion of aerosols in models would reduce the annual So by 15-20 W m2 over land and 5-10 W m2 over the oceans. Model differences in cloud cover contribute to differences in So between datasets; for global land, this is most clearly demonstrated through the effects of cloud cover on the surface shortwave cloud forcing. The tendency for most datasets to underestimate cloudiness, particularly over global land, and possibly to underestimate atmospheric water vapor absorption, probably contributes to the excess downwelling shortwave flux at the surface.

Material fluxes on the surface of the earth

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

National Research Council Staff; Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources; Division on Earth and Life Studies; Board on Earth Sciences & Resources; National Research Council; National Academy of Sciences

...) level of surficial fluxes and their dynamics. Leading experts in the field offer a historical perspective on geofluxes and discuss the cycles of materials on the earth's surface, from weathering processes to the movement of material...

Direct nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes from soils under different land use in Brazil—a critical review

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Meurer, Katharina H E; Franko, Uwe; Stange, Claus F; Rosa, Jaqueline Dalla; Madari, Beata E; Jungkunst, Hermann F

2016-01-01

Brazil typifies the land use changes happening in South America, where natural vegetation is continuously converted into agriculturally used lands, such as cattle pastures and croplands. Such changes in land use are always associated with changes in the soil nutrient cycles and result in altered greenhouse gas fluxes from the soil to the atmosphere. In this study, we analyzed literature values to extract patterns of direct nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions from soils of different ecosystems in Brazil. Fluxes from natural ecosystems exhibited a wide range: whereas median annual flux rates were highest in Amazonian and Atlantic rainforests (2.42 and 0.88 kg N ha −1 ), emissions from cerrado soils were close to zero. The decrease in emissions from pastures with increasing time after conversion was associated with pasture degradation. We found comparatively low N 2 O-N fluxes from croplands (−0.07 to 4.26 kg N ha −1 yr −1 , median 0.80 kg N ha −1 yr −1 ) and a low response to N fertilization. Contrary to the assumptions, soil parameters, such as pH, C org , and clay content emerged as poor predictors for N 2 O fluxes. This could be a result of the formation of micro-aggregates, which strongly affect the hydraulic properties of the soil, and consequently define nitrification and denitrification potentials. Since data from croplands mainly derived from areas that had been under natural cerrado vegetation before, it could explain the low emissions under agriculture. Measurements must be more frequent and regionally spread in order to enable sound national estimates. (topical review)

Modelling water fluxes for the analysis of diffuse pollution at the river basin scale

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wit, de M.; Meinardi, C.R.; Wendland, F.; Kunkel, R.

2000-01-01

Diffuse pollution is a significant and sometimes even major component of surface water pollution. Diffuse inputs of pollutants to the surface water are related to runoff of precipitation. This means that the analysis of diffuse pollutant fluxes from the land surface to the surface water requires an

Communicating why land surface heterogeneity matters

Science.gov (United States)

Tague, C.; Burke, W.; Bart, R. R.; Turpin, E.; Wood, T.; Gordon, D.

2017-12-01

As hydrologic scientists, we know that land surface heterogeneity can have nuanced and sometimes dramatic impacts on the water cycle. Land surface characteristics, including the structure and composition of vegetation and soil storage and drainage properties, alter how incoming precipitation is translated into streamflow and evapotranspiration. Land surface heterogeneity can explain why this partitioning of incoming precipitation cannot always be computed by a simple water budget calculation. We also know that land surface characteristics are dynamic - vegetation grows and changes with fire, disease and human actions and these changes will alter the partitioning of water - how much so, however depends itself on other site characteristics - soil water storage and the timing and magnitude of precipitation. This complex impact of space-time dynamics on the water cycle is something we need to effectively communicate to non-experts. For example, we may want to explain why sometimes forest management practices increase water availability but sometimes they don't - or why the impacts of urbanization or fire are location specific. If we do not communicate these dependencies we risk over-simplifying and eroding scientific credibility when observed effects don't match simple generalizations. On the other hand excessive detail can overwhelm and disengage audiences. So how do we help different communities public, private landowners, other scientists, NGOs, governments to better understand the role of space-time heterogeneity. To address this issue, we present some results from ongoing work that looks at the impact of fuel treatment of forest ecohydrology. This work stem from a collaboration between an ecohydrologic modeling team, social-scientists, a visual artist and compute graphics students. We use a coupled model, validated with field measurements, to show why spatial heterogeneity matters for understanding the impact of fuel treatments on the water cycle for the Sierra

Impacts of the Air Temperature Rising on the Soil Freezing-thawing Processes and the Surface Fluxes on the Tibetan Plateau

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, G.; Yang, D.

2017-12-01

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the highest plateau all over the world and plays an essential role on the global water cycle and the atmospheric circulation, because many large rivers originating there and it acts as a "heat source" to pump the Asian summer monsoon. During the past 50 years, the TP is among the most sensitive regions to the climatic warming. Many previous researches have been delved into the impacts of the permafrost degradation there. But the variations and the impacts of the changes of the seasonally frozen ground, which consists 50 % of the plateau region, have been less discussed. Thus, this study uses the geomorphology-based eco-hydrological model to simulate the long-term land surface processes on 37 after picked China Meteorological Administration stations. And, these stations uniformly locate within the seasonally frozen regions of the TP. The modelled freezing-thawing cycles have successfully reproduced the observations with the correlation squares of 0.8 (significance level p rate of 0.13 m/decade and 4.6 days/decade. The changes of the near-surface freezing-thawing cycles exert large influences on the flux exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere. The advance (delay) of the freezing ending (starting) time has caused 13 % (p influence the following summer monsoon and redistribute the precipitation over the southeastern Asia. Also, as the incoming radiation and the latent heat keeping stable, less sensible heat fluxes would lead to more ground heat storage which provides a better thermal condition for the vegetation growth.

Effects of land cover change on litter decomposition and soil greenhouse gas fluxes in subtropical Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Ngar Wong, Chun; Lai, Derrick Yuk Fo

2017-04-01

Nowadays, over 50% of the world's population live in urbanized areas and the level of urbanization varies substantially across countries. Intense human activities and management associated with urbanization can alter the microclimate and biogeochemical processes in urban areas, which subsequently affect the provision of ecosystem services and functions. Litter decomposition and soil greenhouse gas (GHG) exchange play an important role in governing nutrient cycling and future climate change, respectively. Yet, the effects of urbanization on these two biogeochemical processes remain uncertain and not well understood, especially in subtropical and high-density cities. This study aims to examine the effects of urbanization on decomposition and GHG fluxes among four land covers- natural forest, urban forest, farmland and roadside planter, in Hong Kong based on litterbag experiment and closed chamber measurements for one full year. Litter decomposition rate was significantly lower in farmland than in other land cover types. Significant differences in CO2 emission were detected among the four land cover types (pmean N2O fluxes, respectively. The emission of CO2 was positively correlated with soil potassium content, while CH4 and N2O flux increased markedly with soil temperature and nitrate nitrogen content, respectively. The results obtained in this study will enhance our understanding on urban ecosystem and be useful for recommending sustainable management strategies for conservation of ecosystem services in urban areas.

Global CO2 fluxes estimated from GOSAT retrievals of total column CO2

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Basu

2013-09-01

Full Text Available We present one of the first estimates of the global distribution of CO2 surface fluxes using total column CO2 measurements retrieved by the SRON-KIT RemoTeC algorithm from the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT. We derive optimized fluxes from June 2009 to December 2010. We estimate fluxes from surface CO2 measurements to use as baselines for comparing GOSAT data-derived fluxes. Assimilating only GOSAT data, we can reproduce the observed CO2 time series at surface and TCCON sites in the tropics and the northern extra-tropics. In contrast, in the southern extra-tropics GOSAT XCO2 leads to enhanced seasonal cycle amplitudes compared to independent measurements, and we identify it as the result of a land–sea bias in our GOSAT XCO2 retrievals. A bias correction in the form of a global offset between GOSAT land and sea pixels in a joint inversion of satellite and surface measurements of CO2 yields plausible global flux estimates which are more tightly constrained than in an inversion using surface CO2 data alone. We show that assimilating the bias-corrected GOSAT data on top of surface CO2 data (a reduces the estimated global land sink of CO2, and (b shifts the terrestrial net uptake of carbon from the tropics to the extra-tropics. It is concluded that while GOSAT total column CO2 provide useful constraints for source–sink inversions, small spatiotemporal biases – beyond what can be detected using current validation techniques – have serious consequences for optimized fluxes, even aggregated over continental scales.

Area-averaged surface fluxes and their time-space variability over the FIFE experimental domain

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, E. A.; Hsu, A. Y.; Crosson, W. L.; Field, R. T.; Fritschen, L. J.; Gurney, R. J.; Kanemasu, E. T.; Kustas, W. P.; Nie, D.; Shuttleworth, W. J.

1992-01-01

The underlying mean and variance properties of surface net radiation, sensible-latent heat fluxes and soil heat flux are studied over the densely instrumented grassland region encompassing FIFE. Flux variability is discussed together with the problem of scaling up to area-averaged fluxes. Results are compared and contrasted for cloudy and clear situations and examined for the influence of surface-induced biophysical controls (burn and grazing treatments) and topographic controls (aspect ratios and slope factors).

Are ghost surfaces quadratic-flux-minimizing?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hudson, S.R.; Dewar, R.L.

2009-01-01

Two candidates for 'almost-invariant' toroidal surfaces passing through magnetic islands, namely quadratic-flux-minimizing (QFMin) surfaces and ghost surfaces, use families of periodic pseudo-orbits (i.e. paths for which the action is not exactly extremal). QFMin pseudo-orbits, which are coordinate-dependent, are field lines obtained from a modified magnetic field, and ghost-surface pseudo-orbits are obtained by displacing closed field lines in the direction of steepest descent of magnetic action, ∫A.dl. A generalized Hamiltonian definition of ghost surfaces is given and specialized to the usual Lagrangian definition. A modified Hamilton's Principle is introduced that allows the use of Lagrangian integration for calculation of the QFMin pseudo-orbits. Numerical calculations show QFMin and Lagrangian ghost surfaces give very similar results for a chaotic magnetic field perturbed from an integrable case, and this is explained using a perturbative construction of an auxiliary poloidal angle for which QFMin and Lagrangian ghost surfaces are the same up to second order. While presented in the context of 3-dimensional magnetic field line systems, the concepts are applicable to defining almost-invariant tori in other 11/2 degree-of-freedom nonintegrable Lagrangian/Hamiltonian systems.

A Surface Temperature Initiated Closure (STIC) for surface energy balance fluxes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mallick, Kaniska; Jarvis, Andrew J.; Boegh, Eva

2014-01-01

The use of Penman–Monteith (PM) equation in thermal remote sensing based surface energy balance modeling is not prevalent due to the unavailability of any direct method to integrate thermal data into the PM equation and due to the lack of physical models expressing the surface (or stomatal......) and boundary layer conductances (gS and gB) as a function of surface temperature. Here we demonstrate a new method that physically integrates the radiometric surface temperature (TS) into the PM equation for estimating the terrestrial surface energy balance fluxes (sensible heat, H and latent heat, λ......E). The method combines satellite TS data with standard energy balance closure models in order to derive a hybrid closure that does not require the specification of surface to atmosphere conductance terms. We call this the Surface Temperature Initiated Closure (STIC), which is formed by the simultaneous solution...