Convective boundary layer budgets of moisture and sensible heat over an unstressed prairie

An evaluation of convective boundary layer budgets of sensible heat and moisture were examined for two days over the unstressed vegetation of the tallgrass Konza National Prairie. In addition to the budget evaluation the study had these goals: to estimate the area-average surface fluxes and compare them to independent, ground-based measurements, to estimate the near surface evaporative fraction, and to compare different evaluations of the ratio of surface to inversion fluxes, i.e., the entrainment parameter. The budget analyses indicate that vertical and horizontal advection were significant terms in the budget and cannot be ignored.