A Feasibility Study for Determining the Sensible Heat Flux to and from Small Green Roofs

Abstract

Eddy covariance is an established technique for registering sensible heat fluxes. However, this method is less adequate for smaller surfaces that cannot match the associated footprint. As an alternative technique, a recently constructed acoustic anemometer (Ly-ATOM) is tested, which operates horizontally at an extension of circa 1 m and a data-acquisition frequency of 1 Hz. The Ly-ATOM device reproduces both the acoustic virtual temperature and the horizontal wind components registered by a three-dimensional sonic anemometer. As this Ly-ATOM device can be applied much closer to the ground compared with a sonic anemometer, the size of the related source area is significantly reduced (by a factor of 25). Two methods are used to retrieve the sensible heat flux from variance characteristics of temperature and the horizontal wind components recorded by the Ly-ATOM device: combining the flux-variance-similarity and alternative-flux-variance methods for use in unstable and stable stratification, respectively, yields good results for the sonic measurements. Therefore, these methods can be applied to the Ly-ATOM device as well. In investigating the sensitivity to detect modified surface characteristics, specifically increased evapotranspiration and decreased surface albedo, the Ly-ATOM device proves to be superior to the sonic anemometer which is more vertically removed from the surface of interest.