SGP/EBBR/E15 - Soil Heat Flows Undermeasured, and Latent and Sensible Heat Fluxes 
Overstimated

Use of the wrong soil type soil moisture coefficients caused soil moisture to be greatly 
undermeasured (a typical wrong value was 4% instead of the correct 17%), soil heat flows 
to be undermeasured, and sensible and latent heat fluxes to be overestimated.

Soil heat flow plate outputs were undermeasured by up to 10%, change of energy storage was 
undermeasured by up to 80% and total soil heat flow was undermeasured by up to 50% as a 
result. This would result in approximately a 5% overestimation of both sensible and 
latent heat fluxes.

The percentage overestimation (in the absolute sense) of sensible and latent heat 

fluxes varies with soil moisture, but decreasing the fluxes (in an absolute sense; in other 
words make negative fluxes larger and positive fluxes smaller) by 5% would be 
appropriate for most soil moisture conditions.

• soil_moisture_1
• soil_moisture_2
• soil_moisture_3
• soil_moisture_4
• soil_moisture_5
• corr_soil_heat_flow_4
• corr_soil_heat_flow_3
• corr_soil_heat_flow_2
• corr_soil_heat_flow_1
• corr_soil_heat_flow_5
• surface_soil_heat_flux_1
• surface_soil_heat_flux_2
• surface_soil_heat_flux_avg
• soil_heat_capacity_3
• soil_heat_capacity_2
• soil_heat_capacity_1
• energy_storage_change_1
• energy_storage_change_3
• energy_storage_change_2
• soil_heat_capacity_5
• energy_storage_change_5
• soil_heat_capacity_4
• energy_storage_change_4
• latent_heat_flux
• surface_soil_heat_flux_5
• sensible_heat_flux
• surface_soil_heat_flux_3
• surface_soil_heat_flux_4