Recent activities of the Surface-atmosphere Exchange Working Group

Jun-Dec 2021 update

• There is a need for high spatiotemporal resolution surface and sub-surface data, in particular soil properties and soil moisture for modelling evaluation and energy balance studies, and detailed information about snow cover during the Winter EOP.

• There is a need for multi-level turbulence measurements to capture variability in fluxes with height, including specialised measurements (e.g. short-path sonic anemometers) to study very near-surface processes.

• Several ongoing TEAMx projects that are of interest to this WG including ASTER (PI Manuela Lehner) which focuses on model evaluation of surface energy fluxes; Unicorn (PI Ivana Stiperski) which aims to develop a new framework for understanding near-surface turbulence in complex terrain; TExSMBL (PI Manuela Lehner) and CROSSINN (PI Bianca Adler) which examine the diurnal cycle of valley-winds in the Inn Valley; and the recently funded INTERFACE project (PI Lorenzo Giovannini) which will investigate energy balance closure and advection using eddy covariance and drone measurements in the Adige Valley and Inn Valley. Several other projects and proposals are being planned, including some which focus on snow-related processes and will involve specialised observations during the Winter EOP, and others concentrating on biosphere-atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide and other gases.