On the variability of the Priestley-Taylor coefficient over water bodies
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Authors
Assouline, Shmuel
Li, Dan
Tyler, Scott
Tanny, Josef
Cohen, Shabtai
Bou-Zeid, Elie
Parlange, Marc B.
Katul, Gabriel G.
Issue Date
2016
Type
Article
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Abstract
Deviations in the Priestley-Taylor (PT) coefficient alpha(PT) from its accepted 1.26 value are analyzed over large lakes, reservoirs, and wetlands where stomatal or soil controls are minimal or absent. The data sets feature wide variations in water body sizes and climatic conditions. Neither surface temperature nor sensible heat flux variations alone, which proved successful in characterizing alpha(PT) variations over some crops, explain measured deviations in alpha(PT) over water. It is shown that the relative transport efficiency of turbulent heat and water vapor is key to explaining variations in alpha(PT) over water surfaces, thereby offering a new perspective over the concept of minimal advection or entrainment introduced by PT. Methods that allow the determination of alpha(PT) based on low-frequency sampling (i.e., 0.1 Hz) are then developed and tested, which are usable with standard meteorological sensors that filter some but not all turbulent fluctuations. Using approximations to the Gram determinant inequality, the relative transport efficiency is derived as a function of the correlation coefficient between temperature and water vapor concentration fluctuations (R-Tq). The proposed approach reasonably explains the measured deviations from the conventional alpha(PT) = 1.26 value even when R-Tq is determined from air temperature and water vapor concentration time series that are Gaussian-filtered and subsampled to a cutoff frequency of 0.1 Hz. Because over water bodies, R-Tq deviations from unity are often associated with advection and/or entrainment, linkages between alpha(PT) and R-Tq offer both a diagnostic approach to assess their significance and a prognostic approach to correct the 1.26 value when using routine meteorological measurements of temperature and humidity.
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Citation
Assouline, S., Li, D., Tyler, S., Tanny, J., Cohen, S., Bou-Zeid, E., … Katul, G. G. (2016). On the variability of the Priestley-Taylor coefficient over water bodies. Water Resources Research, 52(1), 150–163. doi:10.1002/2015wr017504
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ISSN
0043-1397