Urban Water Storage Capacity Inferred From Observed Evapotranspiration Recession

Water storage plays an important role in mitigating heat and flooding in urban areas. Assessment of the water storage capacity of cities remains challenging due to the inherent heterogeneity of the urban surface. Traditionally, effective storage has been estimated from runoff. Here, we present a novel approach to estimate effective water storage capacity from recession rates of observed evaporation during precipitation-free periods. We test this approach for cities at neighborhood scale with eddy-covariance based latent heat flux observations from 14 contrasting sites with different local climate zones, vegetation cover and characteristics, and climates. Based on analysis of 583 drydowns, we find storage capacities to vary between 1.3 and 28.4 mm, corresponding to e-folding timescales of 1.8-20.1 days. This makes the urban storage capacity at least five times smaller than all the observed values for natural ecosystems, reflecting an evaporation regime characterized by extreme water limitation.Peer reviewe

ORCHIDEE-PEAT (revision 4596), a model for northern peatland CO2, water, and energy fluxes on daily to annual scales

Peatlands store substantial amounts of carbon and are vulnerable to climate change. We present a modified version of the Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) land surface model for simulating the hydrology, surface energy, and CO2 fluxes of peatlands on daily to annual timescales. The model includes a separate soil tile in each 0.5 degrees grid cell, defined from a global peatland map and identified with peat-specific soil hydraulic properties. Runoff from non-peat vegetation within a grid cell containing a fraction of peat is routed to this peat soil tile, which maintains shallow water tables. The water table position separates oxic from anoxic decomposition. The model was evaluated against eddy-covariance (EC) observations from 30 northern peatland sites, with the maximum rate of carboxylation (V-cmax) being optimized at each site. Regarding short-term day-to-day variations, the model performance was good for gross primary production (GPP) (r(2) = 0.76; Nash-Sutcliffe modeling efficiency, MEF = 0.76) and ecosystem respiration (ER, r(2) = 0.78, MEF = 0.75), with lesser accuracy for latent heat fluxes (LE, r(2) = 0.42, MEF = 0.14) and and net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE, r(2) = 0.38, MEF = 0.26). Seasonal variations in GPP, ER, NEE, and energy fluxes on monthly scales showed moderate to high r(2) values (0.57-0.86). For spatial across-site gradients of annual mean GPP, ER, NEE, and LE, r(2) values of 0.93, 0.89, 0.27, and 0.71 were achieved, respectively. Water table (WT) variation was not well predicted (r(2) <0.1), likely due to the uncertain water input to the peat from surrounding areas. However, the poor performance of WT simulation did not greatly affect predictions of ER and NEE. We found a significant relationship between optimized V-cmax and latitude (temperature), which better reflects the spatial gradients of annual NEE than using an average V-cmax value.Peer reviewe

Developing a research strategy to better understand, observe, and simulate urban atmospheric processes at kilometer to subkilometer scales

A Met Office/Natural Environment Research Council Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme workshop brought together 50 key international scientists from the UK and international community to formulate the key requirements for an Urban Meteorological Research strategy. The workshop was jointly organised by University of Reading and the Met Office

Turbulent sensible heat flux in Łódź obtained from scintillometer measuerments - comparison of free and mix algorithms

The primary aim of this paper was to present the results of turbulent sensible heat flux (QH) measurements with Scintillometer Scintec BLS900 (LAS). The theoretical background of scintillation method has been presented as well as two different ways of sensible heat flux computation from LAS. The measurements presented here were conducted from April to December 2011. Diurnal and partially annual variability of QH has been analyzed, moreover the mean diurnal course of QH in considered months has been prepared. In order to choose the optimal method of QH computation from LAS the results obtained with three different Monin-Obuchov similarity theory functions as well as free convection assumption has been compared. In first case it has been proved that sensible heat flux differs significantly depending on chosen universal function. In turn in case of free convection assumptions it has been revealed that it is valid only for very unstable conditions. Therefore it does not apply to long-time heat flux measurement in case of Łódź. Nevertheless, this study has shown that scintillation method is valuable and reasonable source of path-averaged QH estimates in considered city.Głównym celem pracy była prezentacja wyników pomiarów turbulencyjnego strumienia ciepła jawnego (QH) w Łodzi za pomocą scyntylometru Scintec BLS900. Przedstawione zostały założenia teoretyczne metody scyntylacyjnej, jak również metody wyznaczania strumienia ciepła jawnego za pomocą scyntylometru. Pomiary obejmowały okres od kwietnia do grudnia 2011 roku. Przeanalizowano dobową oraz częściowo roczną zmienność QH, wyznaczając przy tym średnie dobowe jego przebiegi dla poszczególnych miesięcy. W celu wyznaczenia optymalnej metody estymacji QH z pomiarów scyntylometrycznych porównano wyniki uzyskane przy wykorzystaniu trzech różnych funkcji uniwersalnych teorii podobieństwa Monina-Obuchova, jak również przybliżenia dla swobodnej konwekcji. W pierwszym przypadku wykazano, iż strumieni ciepła jawnego w znacznym stopniu różni się, w zależności od zastosowanej funkcji uniwersalnej. Z kolei założenie swobodnej konwekcji w Łodzi sprawdza się jedynie w przypadku silnie chwiejnej warstwy granicznej. Ponadto wykazano, iż w przypadku Łodzi metoda scyntylacyjna stanowi wiarygodną alternatywę wyznaczania strumieni turbulencyjnych

Turbulent Sensible Heat Flux in Łódź Obtained from Scintillometer Measuerments – Comparison of Free and Mix Algorithms

The primary aim of this paper was to present the results of turbulent sensible heat flux (QH) measurements with Scintillometer Scintec BLS900 (LAS). The theoretical background of scintillation method has been presented as well as two different ways of sensible heat flux computation from LAS. The measurements presented here were conducted from April to December 2011. Diurnal and partially annual variability of QH has been analyzed, moreover the mean diurnal course of QH in considered months has been prepared. In order to choose the optimal method of QH computation from LAS the results obtained with three different Monin-Obuchov similarity theory functions as well as free convection assumption has been compared. In first case it has been proved that sensible heat flux differs significantly depending on chosen universal function. In turn in case of free convection assumptions it has been revealed that it is valid only for very unstable conditions. Therefore it does not apply to long-time heat flux measurement in case of Łódź. Nevertheless, this study has shown that scintillation method is valuable and reasonable source of path-averaged QH estimates in considered city.Głównym celem pracy była prezentacja wyników pomiarów turbulencyjnego strumienia ciepła jawnego (QH) w Łodzi za pomocą scyntylometru Scintec BLS900. Przedstawione zostały założenia teoretyczne metody scyntylacyjnej, jak również metody wyznaczania strumienia ciepła jawnego za pomocą scyntylometru. Pomiary obejmowały okres od kwietnia do grudnia 2011 roku. Przeanalizowano dobową oraz częściowo roczną zmienność QH, wyznaczając przy tym średnie dobowe jego przebiegi dla poszczególnych miesięcy. W celu wyznaczenia optymalnej metody estymacji QH z pomiarów scyntylometrycznych porównano wyniki uzyskane przy wykorzystaniu trzech różnych funkcji uniwersalnych teorii podobieństwa Monina-Obuchova, jak również przybliżenia dla swobodnej konwekcji. W pierwszym przypadku wykazano, iż strumieni ciepła jawnego w znacznym stopniu różni się, w zależności od zastosowanej funkcji uniwersalnej. Z kolei założenie swobodnej konwekcji w Łodzi sprawdza się jedynie w przypadku silnie chwiejnej warstwy granicznej. Ponadto wykazano, iż w przypadku Łodzi metoda scyntylacyjna stanowi wiarygodną alternatywę wyznaczania strumieni turbulencyjnych