Characteristics of Land–Air Exchange Parameters over Grassland in Southeast Tibet

Abstract

Abstract Accurate parameters that describe land–air exchange processes are essential for studying and predicting atmospheric processes over the Tibetan Plateau. Radiation, atmospheric thermal and moisture conditions, and turbulent heat and momentum fluxes were measured in the Yarlung Zangbo River, southeast Tibet, in May–July 2013. Based on the data, land–air exchange parameters were derived over the grassland surface, including the aerodynamic roughness length z0m, thermal roughness length z0h, the excess resistance to heat transfer kB−1 (where k represents the von Kármán constant and B−1 represents the Stanton number), and momentum and heat transfer coefficients (CD and CH, respectively). The average z0m was 7.0 cm, with a standard deviation of 1.4 cm; these values are higher than those observed in the central and western plateau regions and may have been affected by the tall grass and bush surface covers that surrounded the observation site. The average kB−1 was 5.7 ± 1.8, which is higher than that in other plateau regions in the same season. The average CD during the observation period, (11.9 ± 1.6) × 10−3, is also higher than that of other plateau regions. The commonly used iterative scheme and three noniterative turbulent flux parameterization schemes were evaluated over southeast Tibet using the above observational data. Parameter CD was underestimated by most schemes, whereas CH was overestimated by all schemes. Additional studies suggested that the iterative scheme performed best in retrieving the land–air exchange parameters and can be applied over southeast Tibet.