Project properties
Title Scintillation Technique to estimate heat, water-vapour and momentum
Group Meteorology and Air Quality Group
Project type thesis
Credits 36
Supervisor(s) dr. ir. Oscar Hartogensis
Examiner(s) Prof. dr. A.A.M. Holtslag
Contact info oscar.hartogensis@wur.nl
Begin date 2018/01/01
End date 2019/02/01
Description Scintillation is the effect of trembling air above a hot road
caused by refraction (bending) of light as it interacts with turbulent eddies that transport heat and water vapor.
Scintillometers are instruments consisting of a transmitter and receiver that analyze the area averaged scintillation effect as the structure parameter of the refractive index over a path of 0.1-10km. This turbulence parameter can be related to surface
fluxes through surface layer scaling theory.
MAQ has >20 years of experience in developing and working with various types of scintillometers. If you like analysing turbulence data and/or conduct a small field experiment as part of your MSc thesis then these topics might interest you.

Topic1: Testing field scale scintillometers
Tools: 3 scintillometer types
Keywords: stable boundary layers, intermittent turbulence, short-time scale fluxes, Veenkampen field-site

Topic2: Structure Parameters and Turbulence Isotropy
Tools: turbulence data (20Hz)
Keywords: spectra, correlation-function, variance, Taylor frozen turbulence, isotropy

Topic3: Area averaged ET with the novel bichromatic scintillometer technique
Tools: turbulence data (500Hz)
Keywords: Time-series analyses techniques, scintillometer theory, MOST, irrigated agriculture, Mexico, Germany.
Used skills
Requirements Some understanding of atmospheric turbulence and land-atmiosphere interactions (e.g. courses like Boundary-Layer Meteorology, Atmosphere-Vegetation-Soil Interactions).