SCHEME FOR COMPUTING SURFACE FLUXES FROM MEAN FLOW OBSERVATIONS

A computational scheme is developed for estimating turbulent surface stress, sensible heat flux and humidity flux from mean velocity, temperature and humidity at a single height in the atmospheric surface layer; conditions at this reference level are presumed known from observations or from a numerical atmospheric circulation model. The method is based on coupling a Monin-Obukhov similarity profile to a 'force-restore' formulation for the evolution of surface soil temperature to yield the local values of shear stress, heat flux and surface temperature. A self-contained formulation is presented including parameterizations for solar and infrared radiant flux at the surface. In addition to reference-level mean flow properties, the parameters needed to implement the scheme are thermal heat capacity of the soil, surface aerodynamic roughness, latitude, solar declination, surface albedo, surface emissivity and atmospheric transmissivity. Sample calculations are presented for (a), constant atmospheric forcing at the reference level, and (b) variable atmospheric forcing corresponding to Kahle's (1977) measurements of windspeed, air temperature and radiometer soil surface temperature under dry vegetatively sparse conditions in the Mohave Desert in California. The latter case simulated the observed diurnal variations resonably well for the parameters used. © 1979 D. Reidel Publishing Co.