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AIRCRAFT MEASUREMENTS

Intensive aircraft field measurements over the two sides of the bunny fence will be conducted during the NCAR GLASS radiosonde measurement period at no cost to the project.  This experiment will be similar to the buFex  (Bunny Fence Experiments) intensive field campaigns which were conducted in the 1990’s (e.g., Lyons et al, 1993).

The aircraft will be instrumented with sensors capable of measuring all of the components of surface energy budget (Hacker and Schwerdtfeder, 1988).  These measurements will be supplemented with simultaneous continuous surface observations of turbulent fluxes as well as standard meteorological parameters and infrared thermometry.  Results from previous expeditions are archived at the Western  Australian Remote Sensing Application Centre.  Relationships derived from the aircraft transects and field measurements then are used to characterize the large-scale variation in surface temperature, albedo and surface roughness and their variability throughout the day.  This will be accomplished by repeated overpasses across the bunny fence in transects between the two Bowen Ratio sites and on long traverses on either side of the fence.  These data in turn will be combined with local meteorological data to estimate the latent and sensible heat fluxes between native and agricultural vegetation. 

As reported by Ray et al (2003), aircraft measurements for the time period of 1000-1100 LST were compared to satellite-derived values taken at approximately 1030 LST.  In general, comparisons of latent heat values for the satellite and aircraft measurements were found to be in good agreement, but with discrepancies in sensible heat fluxes.  The combination of simultaneous aircraft, satellite, radiosonde, and Bowen Ratio station observations will allow us to compare the various approaches and to validate them with surface measurements.


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