Surface flux measurements in FIFE: An overview

Abstract

In 1987 the Surface Flux Group of the first ISLSCP Field Experiment (FIFE) operated 22 stations at 20 sites. In 1989, 13 sites were instrumented. A variety of sensors were employed to calculate the fluxes of mass and energy. An effort was made throughout the FIFE campaign to compare sensors. A series of papers in this special issue present these group studies and efforts. These papers principally report the 1987 campaign, although two papers report station intercomparison during 1989. Additional papers examine the time‐space variability of heat, moisture, and momentum fluxes, as well as analyses of the properties of the CO2 fluxes and their relationships to water stress. In this overview paper we describe the basic methodologies of the measurements, provide details on the sensor systems used by members of the Surface Flux Group, and provide a summary of the flux articles appearing in this special issue.

The Energy Balance Experiment EBEX-2000. Part I: overview and energy balance

“…The problem was more evident during the land surface experiments at the end of the 1980s such as the First International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) Field Experiment (FIFE) (Kanemasu et al 1992). While the cause was first thought to be in the eddy-covariance measurements, later studies discussed problems with the radiation measurements (Koitzsch et al 1988) and the storage in the canopy and the upper soil layer (Foken 1990;Bolle et al 1993;Braud et al 1993).…”

Energy balance closure for the LITFASS-2003 experiment

“…In most of the land-surface experiments (Bolle et al 1993;Kanemasu et al 1992;Laubach and Teichmann 1996;Oliphant et al 2004;Oncley et al 2007;Tsvang et al 1991) and also in the carbon dioxide flux networks Wilson et al 2002), a closure of the energy balance of approximately 80% was found. An experiment specifically designed to investigate this problem, the Energy Balance Experiment 2000 (EBEX-2000), took place in the summer of 2000 near Fresno, CA.…”

Results Of A Panel Discussion About The Energy Balance Closure Correction For Trace Gases

“…The discussion was a logical successor to a workshop held in 1994 in Grenoble, France (Foken and Oncley 1995), where the problem of the unclosed surface energy balance-which is where the observed turbulent fluxes of sensible and latent heat do not sufficiently account for the measured net available energy at the Earth's surface-was addressed after energy budget closure analyses in the 1980s and early 1990s (Bolle et al 1993;Kanemasu et al 1992;Koitzsch et al 1988;Laubach and Teichmann 1996;Leuning et al 1982;Tsvang et al 1991). Many of the issues addressed in the 1994 workshop formed the scientific hypothesis for the special Energy Balance Experiment ( EBEX-2000;Oncley et al 2007), but this campaign did not yield a complete solution to the problem.…”