Identification

Title

Dissimilarity of scalar transport in the convective boundary layer in inhomogeneous landscapes

Abstract

A land-surface model (LSM) is coupled with a large-eddy simulation (LES) model to investigate the vegetation-atmosphere exchange of heat, water vapour, and carbon dioxide (CO2) in heterogeneous landscapes. The dissimilarity of scalar transport in the lower convective boundary layer is quantified in several ways: eddy diffusivity, spatial structure of the scalar fields, and spatial and temporal variations in the surface fluxes of these scalars. The results show that eddy diffusivities differ among the three scalars, by up to 10 - 12%, in the surface layer; the difference is partly attributed to the influence of top-down diffusion. The turbulence-organized structures of CO2 bear more resemblance to those of water vapour than those of the potential temperature. The surface fluxes when coupled with the flow aloft show large spatial variations even with perfectly homogeneous surface conditions and constant solar radiation forcing across the horizontal simulation domain. In general, the surface sensible heat flux shows the greatest spatial and temporal variations, and the CO2 flux the least. Furthermore, our results show that the one-dimensional land-surface model scheme underestimates the surface heat flux by 3 - 8% and overestimates the water vapour and CO2 fluxes by 2 - 8% and 1 - 9%, respectively, as compared to the flux simulated with the coupled LES - LSM.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7348mcv

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2009-03-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

An edited version of this paper was published by Springer. Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact