Measurements of Aerodynamic Roughness, Bowen Ratio, and Atmospheric Surface Layer Height by Eddy Covariance and Tethersonde Systems Simultaneously over a Heterogeneous Rice Paddy

Abstract

Abstract The aerodynamic roughness, Bowen ratio, and friction velocity were measured over a rice paddy using tethersonde and eddy covariance (EC) systems. In addition, the height ranges of the atmospheric inertial sublayer (ISL) were derived using the tethersonde data. Comparison of the friction velocity, latent and sensible heat fluxes, and Bowen ratio estimated from these systems show their correlation coefficients to be >0.7. This difference between the observational systems can be associated with their respective footprint areas. The aerodynamic roughness was observed to be about 0.03 m for wind blowing from a paddy-dominated area (PDA) and about 0.37 m from a rice paddy interspersed with buildings (PIB) based on the ISL profile. Results are close to the effective roughness length model of Mason, having the same shear stresses at the blending height. In contrast, both the geometric mean model of Taylor and the arithmetic mean model of Tsai and Tsuang underestimate the effective roughness over the PIB. During daylight hours, the height range of the ISL ranged from a few meters to 25 m above ground level (AGL) for wind blowing from the PDA and 14–42 m for wind blowing from the PIB.