ESTIMATE OF THE SURFACE ENERGY PARTITION FROM AIR TEMPERATURE AND SPECIFIC HUMIDITY METEOROLOGICAL TIME SERIES

This paper is a complementary analysis to method development, which proposes to estimate the energy partition on the surface by Bowen ratio method and height of convective boundary layer on the monthly scale based on the average temporal evolution of the variables air temperature and specific humidity. The basic hypothesis is that the evolution of these quantities is controlled solely by the convergence of surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat. This assumption is valid for monthly scale and in regions of middle latitudes away from the coast. Thus, it is assumed that the advective terms of the balance equation of these quantities in the convective boundary layer, the prefrontal situations and post-frontal have opposite sign. Therefore, using for a longer time scale than the typical scale of the passage of synoptic systems, the cancellation terms of hypothesis can be tested. In this study, the method is applied to the region of Santa Maria, where it is assumed that the conditions allowing despise the advective terms in monthly scale are valid. When testing the method on different time scales: 5,10,15,20 and 30 days, smaller errors temperature and specific humidity were for 15 and 30 days, while the sensible heat and latent heat fluxes showed lower relative errors at 20 and 30 days, respectively.