Can an energy balance model provide additional constraints on how to close the energy imbalance?

Elucidating the causes for the energy imbalance, i.e. the phenomenon that eddy covariance latent and sensible heat fluxes fall short of available energy, is an outstanding problem in micrometeorology. This paper tests the hypothesis that the full energy balance, through incorporation of additional independent measurements which determine the driving forces of and resistances to energy transfer, provides further insights into the causes of the energy imbalance and additional constraints on energy balance closure options. Eddy covariance and auxiliary data from three different biomes were used to test five contrasting closure scenarios. The main result of our study is that except for nighttime, when fluxes were low and noisy, the full energy balance generally did not contain enough information to allow further insights into the causes of the imbalance and to constrain energy balance closure options. Up to four out of the five tested closure scenarios performed similarly and in up to 53% of all cases all of the tested closure scenarios resulted in plausible energy balance values. Our approach may though provide a sensible consistency check for eddy covariance energy flux measurements.