Abstract
The flux footprint, that is the contribution per unit emission from each element of the upwind surface area to measurement of the vertical flux of a passive scalar, is calculated for fluxes estimated by micrometeorological profile techniques. It is found that the upwind extent of the footprint for concentration-profile flux estimates is similar to that of the footprint for eddy-covariance flux measurements, when the eddy-covariance measurement is made at a height equal to the arithmetic mean of the highest and lowest profile measurement heights for stable stratification or the geometric mean for unstable stratification. The concentration-profile flux footprint depends on the ratio of the highest to the lowest measurement height, but is insensitive to the number of measurement levels. The concentration-profile flux footprint extends closer to the measurement location than does the 'equivalent’ eddy-covariance flux footprint, and the difference becomes more pronounced as the ratio of the profile measurement heights increases. The flux footprint for the Bowen-ratio technique is identical to that for a two-level profile measurement only for very limited circumstances. In the more general case, a flux footprint cannot be defined for the Bowen-ratio technique and the uniform upwind fetch required for representative flux measurements depends on the specific spatial distribution of surface fluxes.
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Horst, T.W. The Footprint for Estimation of Atmosphere-Surface Exchange Fluxes by Profile Techniques. Boundary-Layer Meteorology 90, 171–188 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1001774726067
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1001774726067