A STUDY OF THE ASSESSMENT OF AIR-TEMPERATURE, AND SENSIBLE-HEAT AND LATENT-HEAT FLUXES FROM SONIC-ANEMOMETER OBSERVATIONS

In the past ten years, use of sonic anemometers to provide fast-response wind sensing in the atmospheric surface layer became more and more intensive, due to their increasing availability, decreasing cost and increasing number of publications regarding their data treatment. In this paper, we present an algorithm we have developed in order to analyse the data of one of the most diffused types of sonic anemometer, ie. the Gill sonic anemometer. Our software allows to evaluate the air temperature and the sensible- and latent-heat fluxes if also low-response measurements of air humidity at the same level of sonic anemometer, and of net radiation and ground surface flux are available. We let our software the option of evaluating the fluxes along the mean local streamline (thus the turbulent fluxes are associated with transport across mean streamline surfaces). By using the data gathered in two field experiments, we discuss the applications of the proposed formulations and check the accuracy of our method by comparing the evaluated fluxes with those measured by fluxmeter.