Energy balance closure of two bog surfaces in central Sweden

Typical bogs in the boreal forest zone can be characterised by hummock and hollow micro-topography and sparsely vegetated surfaces. Their energy balance has been studied much less than for other types of surface, i.e. fields and forests. Micrometeorological measurements were carried out in central Sweden at two bogs in different summer seasons. From the measured profiles of wind speed, air temperature and humidity, the turbulent sensible and latent heat fluxes were calculated according to the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory. The daytime sensible and latent heat fluxes were typically of similar size, with the latent heat fluxes still being slightly higher. Independent measurements of turbulent, radiative and ground heat fluxes allowed to consider the surface energy balance closure. During fair weather conditions, the net radiation exceeded the sum of turbulent and ground heat fluxes by up to 200 W m when measurements with ground heat flux plates were used in the analysis. It is difficult to attribute this discrepancy to errors in turbulent fluxes, because the fetch was long enough (400 m or more). Also, the size and shape of the two bogs and the positions of the tower were different, but the discrepancies in the energy budget were very similar. It is, however, known that measurements with heat flux plates in the peat are problematic. The ground heat flux measured with plates was very low and was considered to be the most unreliable component of the surface energy balance. An alternative method from the literature, which used temperature measurements in the peat and at the surface but did not require any information on the soil thermal properties near the surface, was used for alternative ground-heat-flux calculations. The use of this method improved the closure of the surface energy balance, but an about 100 W m large discrepancy still remained unexplained. A further improvement is expected when lateral heat exchange in the hummocks could be taken into account.