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The Influence of Aircraft Speed Variations on Sensible Heat-Flux Measurements by Different Airborne Systems

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Abstract

Crawford et al. (Boundary-Layer Meteorol 66:237–245, 1993) showed that the time average is inappropriate for airborne eddy-covariance flux calculations. The aircraft’s ground speed through a turbulent field is not constant. One reason can be a correlation with vertical air motion, so that some types of structures are sampled more densely than others. To avoid this, the time-sampled data are adjusted for the varying ground speed so that the modified estimates are equivalent to spatially-sampled data. A comparison of sensible heat-flux calculations using temporal and spatial averaging methods is presented and discussed. Data of the airborne measurement systems \(\hbox {M}^2\hbox {AV}\), Helipod and Dornier 128-6 are used for the analysis. These systems vary in size, weight and aerodynamic characteristics, since the \(\hbox {M}^2\hbox {AV}\) is a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the Helipod a helicopter-borne turbulence probe and the Dornier 128-6 a manned research aircraft. The systematic bias anticipated in covariance computations due to speed variations was neither found when averaging over Dornier, Helipod nor UAV flight legs. However, the random differences between spatial and temporal averaging fluxes were found to be up to 30 % on the individual flight legs.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Mark Bitter for providing the Dornier data and all people who participated in the COPS, LITFASS-98, LITFASS-2003, LITFASS-2009, and LITFASS-2010 campaigns. Philipp Schnetter deserved our thanks for performing the model simulation of the effects of the turbulent wind field on the ground speed. The discussions with Torsten Auerswald and Gerald Lohmann were very helpful during the analysis of the results. We are much obliged to both anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to improve the final version. This work was financed by the Niedersächsische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Geoökologie, Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina Braunschweig, Langer Kamp 19c, 38106 , Braunschweig, Germany

    Sabrina Martin

  2. Centre for Applied Geoscience, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Hölderlinstr. 12, 72074 , Tübingen, Germany

    Jens Bange

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  1. Sabrina Martin
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  2. Jens Bange
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Correspondence to Sabrina Martin.

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Martin, S., Bange, J. The Influence of Aircraft Speed Variations on Sensible Heat-Flux Measurements by Different Airborne Systems. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 150, 153–166 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-013-9853-7

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