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This study examines the seasonal cycle of the components of the surface energy balance in the Volta basin in West Africa as part of the GLOWA-Volta project. The regional climate is characterized by a strong north–south gradient of mean annual rainfall and the occurrence of pronounced dry and wet seasons within one annual cycle, causing a strong seasonal variation in the natural vegetation cover. The observations are conducted with a combined system, consisting of a Large Aperture Scintillometer (LAS) for areally averaged sensible heat flux, radiometers and sensors for soil heat flux. For comparisons the eddy-covariance (EC) method providing the fluxes of momentum, sensible and latent heat is utilized as well. The measurements of a seasonal cycle in 2002/2003 were gathered including the rapid wet-to-dry transition after the wet season at two locations in Ghana, one in the humid tropical southern region and one in the northern region. A direct comparison and the energy balance closure of the two methods are investigated for daytime and nighttime separately. An attempt is made to understand and explain the differences between the two methods and the closure of energy budget found for these. It is found that the two systems correspond well during daytime. During nighttime the LAS seems to perform more realistically than the EC system. Considering the fact that a LAS system is much easier to use in the climate conditions of the Volta basin, it is concluded that the LAS approach is very suitable in this type of climate conditions. Surface conductances are estimated by rearranging the Penman–Monteith equation and compared to a Jarvis-type model optimised for savannah conditions. It is found that temperature dependence should be included in the conductance formulation in contrast to earlier findings. Based on the findings the gathered dataset can be used for further model studies of the climate and environment of West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Three methods for estimating instantaneous sensible heat flux (H) over Savannah environment in West Africa were compared: first, satellite derived estimations using the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) method [Bastiaanssen, W.G.M., Menenti, M., Feddes, R.A., Holtslag, A.A.M., 1998a. A remote sensing energy balance algorithm for land, SEBAL: 1. Formulation. J. Hydrol. 212–213, 198–212]; secondly, measurements at two test sites in Ghana with a large-aperture scintillometer (LAS); third, high resolution mesoscale meteorological simulations using the MM5 (5th-Generation Penn State/NCAR) mesoscale modelling system. Satellite-derived sensible heat flux was based on seven NOAA-16 AVHRR images that were processed for a 2-week period in December 2001 (dry season) and were compared to LAS-data and MM5 simulation results. A methodology based on Gaussian Error Propagation is presented to derive uncertainties in satellite derived sensible heat flux due to (a) input data, (b) coefficients to determine leaf area index (LAI) and (c) methodological differences in estimating surface temperature T 0. Total computed relative uncertainty in H was 15% for the Tamale test site and 20% for the Ejura site. Uncertainties in instantaneous evapotranspiration λ E, however, are much smaller than uncertainties of H. This results due to the same bias in H and R n − G. For LAS-data, an uncertainty analysis due to input data was performed which showed relative uncertainty of 8% for the Tamale site and 7% for Ejura. Satellite derived net radiation (R n) was underestimated in comparison to ground measurements which finally caused an underestimation of H. Satellite estimates of H using spatially interpolated ground based measurements of net radiation showed good agreement to LAS data. MM5-computed latent heat flux showed very low values for the entire region. This caused a serious relative MM5-overestimation of sensible heat flux in comparison to LAS and satellite derived estimates. It could be shown that Gaussian Error Propagation can serve as an essential tool to asses the reliability of satellite derived sensible heat fluxes. The resulting uncertainties give information on sensitivities in estimating H and therefore provide a tool for validation purposes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]