Land surface energy partitioning revisited: A novel approach based on single depth soil measurement

The partitioning of solar energy into sensible, latent, and ground heat fluxes over the land surface is responsible for changes of state variables in the soil-atmosphere system. Recent research enables the reconstruction of the land surface temperature and ground heat flux using Green's function approach, as well as the estimate of the distribution of available energy into latent and sensible heat fluxes based on linear stability analysis. Combining the Green's function approach and linear stability analysis, we propose a new physically based numerical procedure to estimate the land surface energy partitioning in this paper. The new method is capable of predicting all surface energy budgets using a single depth soil measurement; the model reliability is evaluated with comparisons to flux tower measurements. The results of this study deepen our insight into the implicit link between surface energy partition and subsurface soil dynamics and how the link can be employed to related research areas.