The energy balance closure problem: an overview

This paper gives an overview of 20 years of research on the energy balance closure problem. It will be shown that former assumptions that measuring errors or storage terms are the reason for the unclosed energy balance do not stand up because even turbulent fluxes derived from documented methods and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEcological applications Vol. 18; no. 6; p. 1351
Main Author Foken, Thomas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.09.2008
Subjects
Air Movements
Ecosystem
Energy Transfer
Hot Temperature
Models, Theoretical
Plants - metabolism
Sunlight
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Summary:This paper gives an overview of 20 years of research on the energy balance closure problem. It will be shown that former assumptions that measuring errors or storage terms are the reason for the unclosed energy balance do not stand up because even turbulent fluxes derived from documented methods and calibrated sensors, net radiation, and ground heat fluxes cannot close the energy balance. Instead, exchange processes on larger scales of the heterogeneous landscape have a significant influence. By including these fluxes, the energy balance can be approximately closed. Therefore, the problem is a scale problem and has important consequences to the measurement and modeling of turbulent fluxes.
ISSN:1051-0761
DOI:10.1890/06-0922.1