Exploring the use of displaced-beam scintillometerfor daytime measurement of surface energy fluxes over a mediterranean olive orchard

Studies have shown that the footprint of a single eddy covariance (EC) system may not yield representative measurements of the turbulent fluxes at the field scale for sparse vegetated surfaces, whereas scintillometry, due to its larger footprint, may be more suitable for this purpose. However, the latter approach strongly relies on the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (MOST) that strictly applies in the inertial sub-layer only. This work aims at experimentally confirm the reliability of displaced-beam laser scintillometer (DBLS) measurements over an olive orchard against two EC systems during summer and autumn months of 2007 through 2009. It was found that the DBLS underestimated both the momentum and sensible heat fluxes by 15 to 20% when established retrieval procedures were applied. A new method to determine the sensible heat flux from the DBLS based on the addition of a single-height wind speed measurement was tested, yielding estimates that compare well with the EC observations, with discrepancies in sensible heat fluxes of about 30 to 40 W m-2. © 2014 Patron Editore S.r.l. All rights reserved.