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Airborne Measurements of Scale-Dependent Latent Heat Flux Impacted by Water Vapor and Vertical Velocity over Heterogeneous Land Surfaces During the CHEESEHEAD19 Campaign
  • +9
  • Guo Lin,
  • Zhien Wang,
  • Yufei Chu,
  • Conrad Ziegler,
  • Xiao-Ming Hu,
  • Ming Xue,
  • Bart Geerts,
  • Sreenath Paleri,
  • Ankur Rashmikant Desai,
  • Kang Yang,
  • Min Deng,
  • Jonathan DeGraw
Guo Lin
University of Colorado Boulder

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Zhien Wang
University of Colorado Boulder
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Yufei Chu
University of Colorado Boulder
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Conrad Ziegler
National Severe Storms Laboratory
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Xiao-Ming Hu
University of Oklahoma
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Ming Xue
University of Oklahoma
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Bart Geerts
University of Wyoming
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Sreenath Paleri
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Ankur Rashmikant Desai
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Kang Yang
University of Colorado Boulder
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Min Deng
Brookhaven National Laboratory
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Jonathan DeGraw
University of Oklahoma
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Abstract

The spatiotemporal variability of latent heat flux (LE) and water vapor mixing ratio (rv) variability are not well understood due to the scale-dependent and nonlinear atmospheric energy balance responses to land surface heterogeneity. Airborne in situ and profiling Raman lidar measurements with the wavelet technique are utilized to investigate scale-dependent relationships among LE, vertical velocity (w) variance (s2w), and rv variance (s2wv) over a heterogeneous surface in the Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 (CHEESEHEAD19) field campaign. Our findings reveal distinct scale distributions of LE, s2w, and s2wv at 100 m height, with a majority scale range of 120m-4km in LE, 32m-2km in s2w, and 200 m – 8 km in s2wv. The scales are classified into three scale ranges, the turbulent scale (8m–200m), large-eddy scale (200m–2km), and mesoscale (2 km–8km) to evaluate scale-resolved LE contributed by s2w and s2wv. In the large-eddy scale in Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL), 69-75% of total LE comes from 31-51% of the total sw and 39-59% of the total s2wv. Variations exist in LE, s2w, and s2wv, with a range of 1.7-11.1% of total values in monthly-mean variation, and 0.6–7.8% of total values in flight legs from July to September. These results confirm the dominant role of the large-eddy scale in the PBL in the vertical moisture transport from the surface to the PBL. This analysis complements published scale-dependent LE variations, which lack detailed scale-dependent vertical velocity and moisture information.
06 Jul 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
07 Jul 2023Published in ESS Open Archive