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In mountainous lake areas, lake-land and mountain-valley breezes interact with each other, leading to an “extended lake breeze”. These extended lake breezes can regulate and control energy and carbon cycles at different scales. Based on meteorological and turbulent fluxes data from an eddy covariance observation site at Erhai Lake in the Dali Basin, southwest China, characteristics of daytime and nighttime extended lake breezes and their impacts on energy and carbon dioxide exchange in 2015 are investigated. Lake breezes dominate during the daytime while, due to different prevailing circulations at night, there are two types of nighttime breezes. The mountain breeze from the Cangshan Mountain range leads to N1 type nighttime breeze events. When a cyclonic circulation forms and maintains in the southern part of Erhai Lake at night, its northern branch contributes to the formation of N2 type nighttime breeze events. The prevailing wind directions for daytime, N1, and N2 breeze events are southeast, west, and southeast, respectively. Daytime breeze events are more intense than N1 events and weaker than N2 events. During daytime breeze events, the lake breeze decreases the sensible heat flux (Hs) and carbon dioxide flux ( $$\boldsymbol{F}_{\text{CO}_{2}}$$ ) and increases the latent heat flux (LE). During N1 breeze events, the mountain breeze decreases Hs and LE and increases $$\boldsymbol{F}_{\text{CO}_{2}}$$ . For N2 breeze events, the southeast wind from the lake surface increases Hs and LE and decreases $$\boldsymbol{F}_{\text{CO}_{2}}$$ . Results indicate that lakes in mountainous areas promote latent heat mixing but suppress carbon dioxide exchange.

Roll vortices, which often appear when cold air outbreaks over warm ocean surfaces, are an important system for energy and substance exchange between the land surface and atmosphere. Numerical simulations were carried out in the study to simulate roll vortices in the convective boundary layer (CBL). The results indicate, that with proper atmospheric conditions, such as thermal instability in the CBL, stable stratification in the overlying layer and suitable wind shear, and a temperature jump between the two layers in a two-layer atmosphere, convective bands appear after adding initial pulses in the atmosphere. The simulated flow and temperature fields presented convective bands in the horizontal and roll vortices in the crosswind section. The structure of the roll vortices were similar to those observed in the cloud streets, as well as those from analytical solutions. Simulations also showed the influence of depth and instability strength of the CBL, as well as the stratification above the top of the CBL, on the orientation spacing and strength of the roll vortices. The fluxes caused by the convective rolls were also investigated, and should perhaps be taken into account when explaining the surface energy closure gap in the CBL.

To improve the land surface simulation in the arid and semi-arid areas of northern China, the observational data from two field experiments in Dunhuang and Tongyu are used to optimize the parameters in the land surface model, BATS, through calibration with the multicriteria method. Sensitivity analysis to the parameters in Dunhuang and Tongyu indicates that different parameters need to be calibrated in two sites with different environmental and climate regimes. Comparison of observed sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, and ground surface temperature with the simulated ones shows the simulations with the optimized parameters have been substantially improved. Especially, the holistic simulations with the calibration of the parameter values are much closer to the observations in the arid region (Dunhuang), and the energy partition with the calibrated parameters can also be simulated well in the semi-arid region (Tongyu). Whole results demonstrate that the parameter calibration of the land surface model is important when the model is to be used to investigate the land-air interaction.

Based on 3 years (2003–05) of the eddy covariance (EC) observations on degraded grassland and cropland surfaces in a semi-arid area of Tongyu (44°25′N, 122°52′E, 184 m a.s.l.), Northeast China, seasonal and annual variations of water, energy and CO2 fluxes have been investigated. The soil moisture in the thin soil layer (at 0.05, 0.10 and 0.20 m) clearly indicates the pronounced annual wet-dry cycle; the annual cycle is divided into the wet (growing season) and dry seasons (non-growing season). During the growing season (from May to September), the sensible and latent heat fluxes showed a linear dependence on the global solar radiation. However, in the non-growing season, the latent heat flux was always less than 50 W m−2, while the available energy was dissipated as sensible, rather than latent heat flux. During the growing season in 2003–05, the daily average sensible and latent heat fluxes were larger on the cropland surface than on the degraded grassland surface. The cropland ecosystem absorbed more CO2 than the degraded grassland ecosystem in the growing season in 2003–05. The total evapotranspiration on the cropland was more than the total precipitation, while the total evapotranspiration on the degraded grassland was almost the same as the total annual precipitation in the growing season. The soil moisture had a good correlation with the rainfall in the growing season. Precipitation in the growing season is an important factor on the water and carbon budget in the semi-arid area.

A land surface model driven by the continuous three-year observed meteorological data with a time interval of 30 minutes at the Tongyu station, a reference site of the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP), was used to evaluate the observation bias of soil moisture (SM) data and analyze the variation of SM at different time scales. The saline-alkaline soil of the grassland at the Tongyu site makes the measured SM too high, especially in boreal summer of 2003–05. The simulated annual mean SM has the lowest value in 2004 and its three-year variation corresponds to the change of precipitation, whereas the observation shows the increasing trend from 2003 to 2005. Compared to the variation range between −60% and 40% for the anomaly percentage of the simulated daily mean SM during May–October of 2004, the measured data show the higher values more than 40%. The magnitude of the variation trend of the observed daily mean SM in 2003 and 2005 is generally consistent with the simulation. The largest deficiency for the soil moisture observation of the grassland is the overestimated value in the drought year with less precipitation. The simulated monthly mean SM has the lowest value in March due to the large contribution of evaporation relative to precipitation and this phenomenon can not be reproduced in the observation.

Continuous observation data collected over the whole year of 2004 on a cropland surface in Tongyu, a semi-arid area of northeastern China (44°25′N, 122°52′E), have been used to investigate the variations of surface albedo and soil thermal parameters, including heat capacity, thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity, and their relationships to soil moisture. The diurnal variation of surface albedo appears as a U shape curve on sunny days. Surface albedo decreases with the increase of solar elevation angle, and it tends to be a constant when solar elevation angle is larger than 40°. So the daily average surface albedo was computed using the data when solar elevation angle is larger than 40°. Mean daily surface albedo is found to decrease with the increase of soil moisture, showing an exponential dependence on soil moisture. The variations of soil heat capacity are small during Julian days 90–300. Compared with the heat capacity, soil thermal conductivity has very gentle variations during this period, but the soil thermal diffusivity has wide variations during the same period. The soil thermal conductivity is found to increase as a power function of soil moisture. The soil thermal diffusivity increases firstly and then decreases with the increase of soil moisture.

This paper uses a Modified Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Scheme (MSPAS) to study the interaction between land surface and atmospheric boundary layer processes. The scheme is composed of two main parts: atmospheric boundary layer processes and land surface processes. Compared with SiB and BATS, which are famous for their detailed parameterizations of physical variables, this simplified model is more convenient and saves much more computation time. Though simple, the feasibility of the model is well proved in this paper. The numerical simulation results from MSPAS show good agreement with reality. The scheme is used to obtain reasonable simulations for diurnal variations of heat balance, potential temperature of boundary layer, and wind field, and spatial distributions of temperature, specific humidity, vertical velocity, turbulence kinetic energy, and turbulence exchange coefficient over desert and oasis. In addition, MSPAS is used to simulate the interaction between desert and oasis at night, and again it obtains reasonable results. This indicates that MSPAS can be used to study the interaction between land surface processes and the atmospheric boundary layer over various underlying surfaces and can be extended for regional climate and numerical weather prediction study.

The characteristics of the turbulence spectrum, turbulence variance, and turbulence flux at Qamdo over the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau measured during the TIPEX experiment from 18 May to 30 June 1998 are analyzed by the eddy correlation method. During periods of intense convection, most of the spectra of the 3D winds, temperature, and humidity follow a power law with a slope of −2/3. The normalized variances of the 3D winds in relation toz/L satisfy the similarity law but the normalized variances of temperature and humidity are related toz/L by a −1/3 power law only in unstable conditions. In near-neutral stratification,σu/u* andσv/u* at Qamdo and Gerze are nearly constant in rugged terrain andσw/u* at Qamdo and Gerze is similar to the value found in plains, which indicates that the, effects of landform on vertical turbulence is not significant over the southeast and western Tibetan Plateau. During the dry period, the sensible heat dominates, comprising 81% of the heat intensity, with the other 19% being latent heat; during the wet period on the other hand, the latent heat accounts for about 64% of the available energy and the sensible heat only around 36%. The maximum intensity of the heating of air occurs in the middle of the Plateau during the summertime.