Hsin-Ning Su

Modeling Evapotranspiration during SMACEX: Comparing Two Approaches for Local- and Regional-Scale Prediction

Abstract The Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) model was developed to estimate land surface fluxes using remotely sensed data and available meteorology. In this study, a dual assessment of SEBS is performed using two independent, high-quality datasets that are collected during the Soil Moisture–Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (SMACEX). The purpose of this comparison is twofold. First, using high-quality local-scale data, model-predicted surface fluxes can be evaluated against in situ observations to determine the accuracy limit at the field scale using SEBS. To accomplish this, SEBS is forced with meteorological data derived from towers distributed throughout the Walnut Creek catchment. Flux measurements from 10 eddy covariance systems positioned on these towers are used to evaluate SEBS over both corn and soybean surfaces. These data allow for an assessment of modeled fluxes during a period of rapid vegetation growth and varied hydrometeorology. Results indicate that SEBS can predict evapotranspiration...

Mixtures of Gaussians for uncertainty description in bivariate latent heat flux proxies

Abstract This paper proposes a new probabilistic approach for describing uncertainty in the ensembles of latent heat flux proxies. The proxies are obtained from hourly Bowen ratio and satellite-derived measurements, respectively, at several locations in the southern Great Plains region in the United States. The novelty of the presented approach is that the proxies are not considered separately, but as bivariate samples from an underlying probability density function. To describe the latter, the use of Gaussian mixture density models—a class of nonparametric, data-adaptive probability density functions—is proposed. In this way any subjective assumptions (e.g., Gaussianity) on the form of bivariate latent heat flux ensembles are avoided. This makes the estimated mixtures potentially useful in nonlinear interpolation and nonlinear probabilistic data assimilation of noisy latent heat flux measurements. The results in this study show that both of these applications are feasible through regionalization of estim...