Abstract. The role of land-atmosphere interactions under heterogeneous surface conditions is investigated in order to identify mechanisms responsible for altering surface heat and moisture fluxes. Twelve coupled land surface – large eddy simulation scenarios with four different length scales of surface variability under three different horizontal wind speeds are used in the analysis. The base case uses Landsat ETM imagery over the Cloud Land Surface Interaction Campaign (CLASIC) field site for 3 June 2007. Using wavelets, the surface fields are band-pass filtered in order to maintain the spatial mean and variances to length scales of 200 m, 1600 m, and 12.8 km as lower boundary conditions to the model. The simulations exhibit little variation in net radiation. Rather, a change in the partitioning of the surface energy between sensible and latent heat flux is responsible for differences in boundary layer dynamics. The sensible heat flux is dominant for intermediate surface length scales. For smaller and larger scales of surface heterogeneity, which can be viewed as being more homogeneous, the latent heat flux becomes increasingly important. The results reflect a general decrease of the Bowen ratio as the surface conditions transition from heterogeneous to homogeneous. Air temperature is less sensitive to surface heterogeneity than water vapor, which implies that the role of surface heterogeneity in modifying the local temperature gradients in order to maximize convective heat fluxes. More homogeneous surface conditions, on the other hand, tend to maximize latent heat flux. Scalar vertical profiles respond predictably to the partitioning of surface energy. Fourier spectra of the vertical wind speed, air temperature and specific humidity (w, T and q) and associated cospectra (w'T', w'q' and T'q'), however, are insensitive to the length scale of surface heterogeneity, but the near surface spectra are sensitive to the mean wind speed.
On the role of infiltration and exfiltration in swash zone boundary layer dynamics
