A method based on high‐frequency temperature measurements to estimate the sensible heat flux avoiding the height dependence

Abstract

A new method to estimate the sensible heat flux H using high‐frequency temperature data has been proposed. The new method proposes to scale the mean eddy vertical velocity responsible for the air parcels renewal using similarity formulae. It is shown that the empirical coefficient resulting from this scaling (apparently height dependant) is relatively constant with height when comparing estimated versus measured H over half hour periods. This work suggests that the coefficient is universal. This allows to us to propose a new method that provides useful advantages for field applications.

This work was supported by the Centre Tecnològic Forestal de Catalunya under project InterReg II (2.3.GC. code 82), by the CICYT projects HID96‐1295‐C04‐03 and HID97‐397, and a grant from the CIRIT.