Abstract
The ability of the relaxed eddy accumulation (REA) method to estimate the kinematic fluxes of temperature, water vapor and carbon dioxide was assessed for the dry season (3 months) at the ATTO (Amazon Tall Tower Observatory) site from turbulence measurements. The measurements were performed at 50 m above ground within the roughness sublayer. Non-conformity with inertial sublayer conditions was confirmed one more time by analyzing dimensionless scalar standard deviations. Over the scale of the whole dry season, REA and EC (eddy covariance) estimates are essentially equal. Recently found results that the REA method outperforms Monin–Obukhov-based approaches are confirmed. However, we also verify that such results fail to reveal significant variability and scatter of the REA estimates when the fluxes are of small magnitude. On the basis of previous studies, we conjecture that this is caused by a likely imbalance between scalar gradient production and molecular dissipation. Confirmation of our results to trace gases, therefore, requires further study.
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Acknowledgements
This study is part of the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, contracts 01LB1001A and 01LK1602A), the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI/FINEP, contract 01.11.01248.00) and the Max Planck Society (MPG). ATTO is also supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas (FAPEAM), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), Universidade do Estado do Amazonas (UEA), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Amazônia (INPA), Programa de Grande Escala da Biosfera-Atmosfera na Amazônia (LBA) and the SDS/CEUC/RDS-Uatumã. Nelson Luís Dias gratefully acknowledges CNPq’s (Brazil’s National Research Council) Research Scholarship 305903/2021-7. Cléo Quaresma Dias-Júnior gratefully acknowledges CNPq’s (Brazil’s National Research Council) Research Scholarship 307530/2022-1.
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NLD conceived the overall research. NLD, IMCT, CQD, LM and DB all processed data and generated figures. NLD wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Dias, N.L., Toro, I.M.C., Dias-Júnior, C.Q. et al. The Relaxed Eddy Accumulation Method Over the Amazon Forest: The Importance of Flux Strength on Individual and Aggregated Flux Estimates. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 189, 139–161 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-023-00829-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-023-00829-7