Comparison of Sensible Heat Fluxes Measured by a Large Aperture Scintillometer and Eddy Covariance System over a Heterogeneous Farmland in East China

The sensible heat is an important component in surface energy partitioning over the land surface. This paper compared the sensible heat fluxes measured by a large aperture scintillometer system (LAS) and an eddy covariance system (EC) over a rice paddy with a patch of mulberry seedlings in the east China coastal region during the period from 13 September–11 October 2015. During the observation period, easterlies and northerlies prevailed, and 96% easterlies and northerlies had a speed of 0–6 m s−1. The sensible heat fluxes measured by the two systems reflected that the value of HLAS generally was inclined to be larger than HEC with the average difference of 20.30 W m−2, and the uncertainty for two instruments was less than 17 W m−2. Analysis of the average footprint resulted that the mulberry seedling field always had a higher contribution to LAS than that to EC, which could be the reason that HLAS was always larger than HEC. During the days when the contributions of the mulberry seedling field to the two systems were close to each other, the sensible heat flux measurements of the two instruments were similar. The case analysis on typical sunny days showed that there would be larger sensible heat fluxes over the mulberry seedling field than in the rice paddy field especially under larger net radiation conditions.