Modeling surface energy fluxes for Iperَ, SP, Brazil: an approach using numerical inversion

The numerical surface energy-budget model proposed by Deardorff [J. Geophys. Res. 83(C4) (1978) 1899] is used to simulate surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat and net irradiance for two periods of the year in Iperó, SP, Brazil: winter of 1992 and summer of 1993. Surface energy models are very sensitive to the soil–vegetation parameters. The values of these parameters, however, are not easy to obtain. Here, a new approach to obtain a set of representative values of soil–vegetation parameters is done by using inverse modeling. The parameter values obtained by the inversion model and used in the numerical model to simulate the fluxes have provided a good description of the interface soil–vegetation conditions in Iperó, according to statistical indicators employed to evaluate the agreement between observed and simulated fluxes. The final results indicate that the inversion method is a fast and efficient resource to obtain the parameters of a model when it is not otherwise possible to get reliable reference values for numerical simulations.