The effect of temperature‐humidity similarity on Bowen ratios,dimensionless standard deviations,and mass transfer coefficients over a lake

Similarity between heat and water vapor turbulent transport in the Atmospheric Surface Layer has been the basis of many engineering models to calculate surface fluxes, including the widely applied Bowen ratio equation, for a long time. Modernly, it is best understood within the context of Monin‐Obkhov Similarity Theory (MOST). In this work we study similarity between temperature and humidity, the Bowen ratio, and turbulent mass and heat transfer coefficients over a tropical lake in Brazil (Furnas Lake). The analysis was partly based on the concept of ‘Surface flux numbers’ recently proposed to diagnose scalar similarity, and considered wind directions and flux footprints. A period of 50 days of 30‐min. micrometeorological runs was used. Several cases of dissimilar temperature‐humidity behavior were found in the data. Both footprint extent and an aggregate temperature‐humidity Surface flux number turned out to be insufficient to diagnose these situations, but separate flux numbers for each scalar were able to diagnose their individual conformity to MOST. Overall, temperature displayed consistently larger relative variances and fluxes in comparison with humidity. The results highlight the need of careful analysis when measurements are made at sites close to land, when flux footprints may extend over there, indicating the possibility of advection effects. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.