Simple and Reliable methods of Estimating Ground Heat Flux at a Tropical location in Nigeria

Abstract

Ground heat flux (Go) plays an important role in the partitioning of energy budget at earth’s surface. The estimates of G0 are required as part of boundary conditions by all general circulation models. In this work, reliability of four simple and computationally cheap models was tested against a more complex and reliable model as the reference. The simple models selected for investigation are: Simple measurement (SM), Percentage of net radiation (PR), Universal function of net radiation (UR), and Linear function of net radiation (LR) models. Force restore model (FR) was used as the reference model. The data of soil temperature measured at the surface and 0.05 m depth, soil heat flux, measured at 0.05m, and net radiation were obtained from Nigerian Micrometeorological Experiment, Ile Ife. Force restore model was first calibrated with direct measurements for soil heat flux at 0.05 m depth with satisfactory result before it was employed to generate reference G0 estimates. Estimates of SM, PR, UR and LR were compared with FR using simple statistics of coefficient of determination (R2), slope, intercept, root mean square error (RMSE) and mean bias error (MBE). The SM model reproduced the day-time and night-time variations of G0 better than all the models that parameterized G0 as a function of net radiation (R2, slope, intercept, RMSE and MBE values of 0.85, 0.87, 3.43W/m2, 32.69, W/m2, -3.70 W/m2 respectively). This model however requires measurement of both soil heat flux and temperature. The LR model generated the best estimates of Go out of all the models that utilized net radiation measurements (R2, slope, intercept, RMSE and MBE values are 0.60, 0.58,4.55 W/m2, 53.81 W/m2 and 3.60 W/m2 respectively) while UR model is the worst. The LR model, though depend only on one measurement, requires site-specific calibrations and can therefore be deployed for gap filling where SM model cannot be used. "