Scintillometric measurements of daytime atmospheric turbulent heat and momentum fluxes and their application to atmospheric stability evaluation

Abstract

This paper presents the scintillometric measurements of daytime heat and momentum fluxes made at Trombay, Mumbai, India during two periods. The first set of measurements was made during 25–26 May 2000 while the second was made during 10–11 October 2000. Typical measurements of sensible heat flux are compared with the estimates obtained by two other independent and well-established techniques namely the SODAR and surface energy balance (SEB) techniques. The estimates by the SEB technique agree reasonably with the measurements while those by the SODAR technique were off by more than 50% when compared to the measurements. This study also demonstrates the use of these measurements by applying them to one of the recent schemes of atmospheric stability evaluation. For adopting the scheme with these measurements, necessary modifications to be made in the scheme with regard to the conditions of the measurement site are also discussed. The modifications were mainly with respect to the geographical location and surface/weather conditions of the measurement site. The usefulness of scintillometric measurements in the stability evaluation is also discussed.