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[1] This paper reports on the canopy layer urban heat island (UHI) and human comfort in a range of small to large cities and villages in the Netherlands. To date, this subject has not been substantially studied in the Netherlands, since it has a relatively mild oceanic (Cfb) climate and impact was assumed to be minor. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper reports on observations of a selected network of reliable hobby meteorologists, including several in The Hague and Rotterdam. A number of alternative measures were also used to quantify UHI, i.e., the generalized extreme value distribution and return periods of UHI and adverse human comfort; its uncertainties were estimated by the statistical method of bootstrapping. It appeared essential to distinguish observations made at roof level from those made within the urban canyon, since the latter related more closely to exposure at pedestrian level and to urban canyon properties in their close neighborhood. The results show that most Dutch cities experience a substantial UHI, i.e., a mean daily maximum UHI of 2.3 K and a 95 percentile of 5.3 K, and that all cities experience a shadow effect in the morning when cities remain cooler than the rural surroundings. Also, an evident relation between the median of the daily maximum UHI and its 95 percentile was discovered. Furthermore, the 95 percentile of the UHI appears well correlated with population density. In addition, we find a significant decrease of UHI and the percentage of surface area covered by green vegetation, but the relation with open water remains unclear.

Abstract. As part of the quality assurance and quality control activities within the CarboEurope-IP network, a comparison of eddy-covariance software was conducted. For four five-day datasets, CO 2 flux estimates were calculated by seven commonly used software packages to assess the uncertainty of CO 2 flux estimates due to differences in postprocessing. The datasets originated from different sites representing different commonly applied instrumentation and different canopy structures to cover a wide range of realistic conditions. Data preparation, coordinate rotation and the implementation of the correction for high frequency spectral losses were identified as crucial processing steps leading to significant discrepancies in the CO 2 flux results. The overall comparison indicated a good although not yet perfect agreement among the different software within 5-10% difference for 30-min CO 2 flux values. Conceptually different ideas about the selection and application of processing steps were a main reason for the differences in the CO 2 flux estimates observed. A balance should be aspired between scientific freedom on the one hand, in order to advance methodical issues, and standardisation of procedures on the other hand, in order to obtain comparable fluxes for multi-site synthesis studies.

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