The research focus of the group is on the understanding of processes in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer, with particular emphasis on the interaction of the atmosphere with the (vegetated) land surface. This includes the measuring and modelling of the relevant atmospheric and related land-surface processes on the local and regional scale.
This group has been involved in several international and EU-funded projects and it has a long experience in experimental micrometeorology: measurements of the surface fluxes of heat, water vapour, carbon dioxide and air pollution gases as well as the components of the energy balance. In the last decade the group specialised in scintillometry, a technique with which actual evaporation can be determined at field scale as well at scales up to 5 km. The group participated and is still engaged in many international field campaigns, particularly HAPEX-SAHEL (Niger), La Posa and Yaqui (Mexico), Rapid and CASES (USA), where scintillometry has been tested in semi-arid regions over irrigated crops.
The Meteorology and Air Quality Group was involved in the devolvement of SEBAL a method to derive area-averaged evaporation from operational satellites, as well as in the SALSA project, in particular for the combination of scintillometry and satellite images. One of the staff members of the group is Principal Investigator of an approved ESA project, by which he has free access to images of the second generation METOSAT.
The RAPID project has been carried out with Prof. R. Allen, whose work forms the basis of the crop-factor approach. In addition, the group is involved in projects also where knowledge is transferred to developing countries, for example Ghana, Mexico and China.
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