HESS Hydrology and Earth System Sciences HESS Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 1607-7938 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/hess-15-1291-2011 A comparison of eddy-covariance and large aperture scintillometer measurements with respect to the energy balance closure problem Liu S. M. 1 Xu Z. W. 1 Wang W. Z. 2 Jia Z. Z. 1 Zhu M. J. 1 Bai J. 1 Wang J. M. 2 State key laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China 26 04 2011 15 4 1291 1306 Copyright: © 2011 S. M. Liu et al. 2011 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/15/1291/2011/hess-15-1291-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/15/1291/2011/hess-15-1291-2011.pdf

We analyzed the seasonal variations of energy balance components over three different surfaces: irrigated cropland (Yingke, YK), alpine meadow (A'rou, AR), and spruce forest (Guantan, GT). The energy balance components were measured using eddy covariance (EC) systems and a large aperture scintillometer (LAS) in the Heihe River Basin, China, in 2008 and 2009. We also determined the source areas of the EC and LAS measurements with a footprint model for each site and discussed the differences between the sensible heat fluxes measured with EC and LAS at AR. The results show that the main EC source areas were within a radius of 250 m at all of the sites. The main source area for the LAS (with a path length of 2390 m) stretched along a path line approximately 2000 m long and 700 m wide. The surface characteristics in the source areas changed with the season at each site, and there were characteristic seasonal variations in the energy balance components at all of the sites. The sensible heat flux was the main term of the energy budget during the dormant season. During the growing season, however, the latent heat flux dominated the energy budget, and an obvious "oasis effect" was observed at YK. The sensible heat fluxes measured by LAS at AR were larger than those measured by EC at the same site. This difference seems to be caused by the so-called energy imbalance phenomenon, the heterogeneity of the underlying surfaces, and the difference between the source areas of the LAS and EC measurements.

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