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THE ENERGY BALANCE CLOSURE PROBLEM: AN OVERVIEW
Author(s) -
Foken Thomas
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
ecological applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.864
H-Index - 213
eISSN - 1939-5582
pISSN - 1051-0761
DOI - 10.1890/06-0922.1
Subject(s) - energy balance , closure (psychology) , balance (ability) , environmental science , turbulence , energy exchange , scale (ratio) , energy (signal processing) , ecology , econometrics , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , mathematics , physics , economics , statistics , biology , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , market economy
This paper gives an overview of 20 years of research on the energy balance closure problem. It will be shown that former assumptions that measuring errors or storage terms are the reason for the unclosed energy balance do not stand up because even turbulent fluxes derived from documented methods and calibrated sensors, net radiation, and ground heat fluxes cannot close the energy balance. Instead, exchange processes on larger scales of the heterogeneous landscape have a significant influence. By including these fluxes, the energy balance can be approximately closed. Therefore, the problem is a scale problem and has important consequences to the measurement and modeling of turbulent fluxes.