Scaling up flux measurements for the boreal forest using aircraft‐tower combinations

Fluxes of carbon dioxide, water vapor, sensible heat, and momentum obtained over the boreal forest from the Twin Otter aircraft and six tower‐based systems are compared. These measurements were collected as part of the Boreal Ecosystem‐Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) during three intensive field campaigns between May 25 and September 17, 1994. The representativeness of the tower‐based measurements collected during BOREAS is discussed. Even though the net radiation from aircraft‐ and tower‐based systems agreed well, in general, the aircraft tended to observe larger latent heat and smaller sensible heat fluxes than the towers. The CO 2 fluxes from the aircraft were substantially less than from the tower, while the differences were relatively small for the momentum fluxes. The relationships between aircraft and tower‐based flux measurements obtained by making repeated runs past various towers are used to scale up tower‐based fluxes to a 16×16 km 2 area near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. It is demonstrated that except for a couple of cases primarily due to rapidly changing radiation conditions, this combination of measurements provides regional flux estimates of momentum, CO 2 , and sensible and latent heat similar to those obtained by flying a grid pattern over the area.