Computational Efficiency for the Surface Renewal Method

Measuring surface fluxes using the surface renewal (SR) method requires a set of programmatic algorithms for tabulation, algebraic calculation, and quality control. Field experiments were conducted over a variety of surface conditions to determine the shortest valid time averaging period for the SR method. Because the SR method utilizes high frequency (20 Hz+) measurements, some steps in the flux calculation are computationally expensive, especially when automating SR to perform many iterations of these calculations. For a study on the 10 minimum time to measure flux, several new algorithms were written to perform the required calculations more efficiently and rapidly. These algorithms demonstrate that simple modifications to SR methods can dramatically improve efficiency. Such programming techniques grant a degree of flexibility to the method, opening new avenues for SR to be used in research, for applied monitoring, and in novel field deployments.