Estimation of surface heat fluxes and evapotranspiration using community land model

Abstract

Land surface heat and water fluxes are key components of water and energy cycles between land and atmosphere. Information about these surface fluxes can guide agricultural production and environmental preservation, and manage different ecosystems to mitigate climate change. The main objective of this work is to estimate the surface heat fluxes and evapotranspiration. For this purpose, the Community Land Model Version 3 was used, atmospheric forcing data and flux observation were extracted from AmeriFlux standardized Level 2 database, then surface heat fluxes under two different underlying surfaces were modeled. The results showed that the model works well regarding the simulation of daily surface fluxes and diurnal surface fluxes although these values were underestimated relative to the values observed from eddycovariance. After validation, evapotranspiration was chosen as the indicator for specific comparison. CLM3.0 showed a better performance in simulating the moisture and evapotranspiration.