Eddy covariance CO2 flux measurements in nocturnal conditions: an analysis of the problem

Abstract

A detailed analysis of the various processes at work in stable boundary layers was made. It pointed out that two main mechanisms may affect eddy covariance measurements in stable conditions and that their impacts were different. On one hand, intermittent turbulence produces strongly nonstationary events during which the validity of turbulent transport and storage measurements is uncertain. On the other hand, during breeze and drainage flow events, significant advection takes place and competes with turbulent flux and storage. Intermittent turbulence questions both the ability of eddy covariance systems to adequately capture turbulent flux and storage and the representativeness of the measurements. Ability of the systems to capture the fluxes could be improved by adapting the averaging time period or the high pass filtering characteristics. However, beyond this, the question of representativeness of the flux remains open as the flux measured during an intermittent turbulence event represents not only the source term, but also the removal of CO2 that built up in the control volume and that cannot be simply related to the source term. In these conditions, the u* discrimination is likely to be insufficient and should be completed with a stationarity criterion. Further research should allow determining better selection criteria. Advection occurs mainly in presence of flows associated with topographical slopes (drainage flows) or with land use changes (breezes). Direct advection measurements were performed at several sites, but the results were shown to be strongly site dependent. A classification based on the general flow pattern and on the source intensity evolution along streamlines was proposed here. Five different patterns were identified that helped to classify the different observations. The classification was found to be a fairly good fit for the observations. This could serve as a tool to better understand and quantify the fluxes at sites subjected to repeatable patterns.