Comparison of different boundary layer surface schemes using single point micrometeorological field data

Abstract

In the last decade, a vast number of land surface schemes has been designed for use in global climate models, atmospheric weather prediction, mesoscale numerical models, ecological models, and models of global changes. Since land surface schemes are designed for different purposes they have various levels of complexity in the treatment of bare soil processes, vegetation, and soil water movement. This paper is a contribution to a little group of papers dealing with intercomparison of differently designed and oriented land surface schemes. For that purpose we have chosen three schemes for classification: i) global climate models. BATS (Dickinson et al., 1986: Dickinson et al., 1992); ii) mesoscale and ecological models, LEAF (Lee, 1992) and iii) mesoscale models. LAPS (Mihailovic, 1996: Mihailovic and Kallos, 1997: Mihailovic et al., 1999) according to the Shao et al. (1995) classification. These schemes were compared using surface fluxes and leaf temperature outputs obtained by time integrations of data sets derived from the micrometeorological measurements above a maize field at an experimental site in De Sinderhoeve (The Netherlands) for 18 August, 8 August, 8 September, and 4 October 1988. Finally, comparison of the schemes was supported applying a simple statistical analysis on the surface flux outputs.