Comparative study of various formulations of evaporation from bare soil using in situ data

Abstract

Numerical simulations lasting seven days are compared with observations of near-surface water content and cumulative evaporation. A comparison of classical bulk aerodynamic formulations shows similar predictions of daytime evaporation while significant differences are exhibited during the night. The so-called surface moisture availability method seems to overestimate the nocturnal evaporation flux. In the context of this dataset, threshold methods strongly underestimate surface evaporation during the whole period of observations. A sensitivity analysis reveals that threshold evaporation (maximum sustainable water flux) is highly sensitive upon the depth of the top soil layer. -from Authors