Intercomparison of Surface Energy Fluxes Estimates from the FEST-EWB and TSEB Models over the Heterogeneous REFLEX 2012 Site (Barrax, Spain)

Abstract

An intercomparison between the Energy Water Balance model (FEST-EWB) and the Two-Source Energy Balance model (TSEB) is performed over a heterogeneous agricultural area. TSEB is a residual model which uses Land Surface Temperature (LST) from remote sensing as a main input parameter so that energy fluxes are computed instantaneously at the time of data acquisition. FEST-EWB is a hydrological model that predicts soil moisture and the surface energy fluxes on a continuous basis. LST is then a modelled variable. Ground and remote sensing data from the Regional Experiments For Land-atmosphere Exchanges (REFLEX) campaign in 2012 in Barrax gave the opportunity to validate and compare spatially distributed energy fluxes. The output of both models matches the ground observations quite well. However, a spatial analysis reveals significant differences between the two approaches for latent and sensible heat fluxes over relatively small fields characterized by high heterogeneity in vegetation cover.