Structural analysis of airborne flux traces and their link to remote sensing of vegetation and surface temperature

• Main Author: Caramori, Paulo Henrique
• Other Authors: Schuepp, Peter H. (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1992
• Subjects: Water vapor transport.; Terrestrial heat flow.; Atmospheric carbon dioxide.; Eddy flux.; Remote sensing.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=41012

This thesis examines the link between airborne flux estimates of CO$ sb2$, sensible heat, and water vapor, and surface parameters retrieved by remote sensing. Chapter 1 analyses the relationship between surface temperature and vegetation indices, obtained from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer on board of NOAA-9 and -10 satellites, and fluxes of sensible heat, latent heat, and CO$ sb2$, estimated from aircraft. Linear relationships between CO$ sb2$ and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) or the Simple Ratio vegetation index (SR) are found on a daily basis, but a highly nonlinear relationship appears for the seasonal variation. Latent Heat fluxes showed the poorest correlations with surface parameters. A seasonal linear relationship appeared between sensible heat and NDVI. Local extreme flux values due to the intermittency of boundary layer dynamics largely contribute to lower the correlations; such variations are the reason for the difficulties in relating fluxes obtained from single overpasses and over short distances to fixed points at the surface. This problem is further examined in Chapter 2, in which conditional sampling of airborne flux estimates is used to characterize the turbulent structures that are carrying flux, and their link to the surface. The analysis confirms that few extreme events may carry a significant fraction of the flux. Missing or hitting one of these structures may translate into very large oscillations on the flux estimate that are often not directly coupled to surface characteristics. A much clearer surface 'signature' emerges when measurements are taken within the surface layer, since the reorganization of turbulent structures that takes place with increasing height will result in a merging of the signature that came from different sources at the surface. This helps to explain some of the poor correlations obtained in Chapter 1 and reinforces the need for a better understanding of the distributions of these tu