INNER REGION HUMIDITY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEUTRAL BOUNDARY-LAYER OVER PRAIRIE TERRAIN

Radiosonde observations were carried out over prairie terrain in the Flint Hills region of eastern Kansas during the FIFE (First ISLSCP Field Experiment, International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project) experiments in 1987. Analysis of 13 specific humidity profiles measured under neutral conditions revealed that they can be described by a logarithmic dependency on (z − d0), where z is the height above the zero‐plane reference at 330 m above sea level and d0 = 26.9 m the assumed displacement height. With a roughness height z0 = 1.05 m, this logarithmic layer was found to occupy the range 52(±28) ≤ (z − 0)/z0 ≤ 104(±37), which is consistent with previous experimental results. Good agreement was obtained (r = 0.87) between the evaporation values derived from the radiosonde profiles and mean values determined independently at six ground stations distributed over the 15 × 15 km experimental region. On the basis of only one profile the scalar roughness for water vapor z0υ was found to be 3 to 5 orders of magnitude smaller than z0. Copyright 1990 by the American Geophysical Union.