Incorporating the effect of heterogeneous surface heating into a semi-empirical model of the surface energy balance closure

TL;DR

This paper enhances a semi-empirical surface energy balance model by incorporating heterogeneous surface heating effects, aiming to better understand and address the persistent energy balance closure problem in eddy covariance measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel parameterization that includes both atmospheric stability and surface heterogeneity, improving the modeling of energy transport in the boundary layer.

Findings

The model accounts for the influence of surface heterogeneity on energy fluxes.

Inclusion of heterogeneity improves the accuracy of energy balance closure.

The approach links surface features and atmospheric conditions to energy transport processes.

Abstract

It was discovered several decades ago that eddy covariance measurements systematically underestimate sensible and latent heat fluxes, creating an imbalance in the surface energy budget. Since then, many studies have addressed this problem and proposed a variety of solutions to the problem, including improvements to instruments and correction methods applied during data postprocessing. However, none of these measures have led to the complete closure of the energy balance gap. The leading hypothesis is that not only surface-attached turbulent eddies but also sub-mesoscale atmospheric circulations contribute to the transport of energy in the atmospheric boundary layer, and the contribution from organized motions has been grossly neglected. The problem arises because the transport of energy through these secondary circulations cannot be captured by the standard eddy covariance method given the relatively short averaging periods of time (~30 minutes) used to compute statistics. There are various approaches to adjust the measured heat fluxes by attributing the missing energy to the sensible and latent heat flux in different proportions. However, few correction methods are based on the processes causing the energy balance gap. Several studies have shown that the magnitude of the energy balance gap depends on the atmospheric stability and the heterogeneity scale of the landscape around the measurement site. Based on this, the energy balance gap within the surface layer has already been modelled as a function of a nonlocal atmospheric stability parameter by performing a large-eddy simulation study with idealized homogeneous surfaces. We have further developed this approach by including thermal surface heterogeneity in addition to atmospheric stability in the parameterization.