A
Bowen ratio is the ratio of energy fluxes from one medium to another by
sensibleSensible heat is potential energy in the form of thermal energy, or heat, and refers to the heat that is added or removed from the air and dry bulb temperature changes without water vapor content change. The thermal body must have a temperature higher than its surroundings...
and
latentThe expression latent heat refers to the amount of energy released or absorbed by a chemical substance during a change of state that occurs without changing its temperature, meaning a phase transition such as the melting of ice or the boiling of water...
heating respectively. It is calculated by the equation
where is sensible heating and is latent heating. The quantity was named by
Harald SverdrupHarald Ulrik Sverdrup was a Norwegian oceanographer and meteorologist who made a number of important theoretical discoveries in these fields...
after
Ira Sprague BowenIra Sprague Bowen was an American astronomer. A graduate of Oberlin College and the California Institute of Technology, he taught physics at Caltech from 1921 to 1945...
(1898–1973), an astrophysicist whose theoretical work on evaporation to air from water bodies made first use of it, and it is used most commonly in
meteorologyMeteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting . Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the eighteenth century...
and
hydrologyHydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout Earth, and thus addresses both the hydrologic cycle and water resources...
.
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A
Bowen ratio is the ratio of energy fluxes from one medium to another by
sensibleSensible heat is potential energy in the form of thermal energy, or heat, and refers to the heat that is added or removed from the air and dry bulb temperature changes without water vapor content change. The thermal body must have a temperature higher than its surroundings...
and
latentThe expression latent heat refers to the amount of energy released or absorbed by a chemical substance during a change of state that occurs without changing its temperature, meaning a phase transition such as the melting of ice or the boiling of water...
heating respectively. It is calculated by the equation
where is sensible heating and is latent heating. The quantity was named by
Harald SverdrupHarald Ulrik Sverdrup was a Norwegian oceanographer and meteorologist who made a number of important theoretical discoveries in these fields...
after
Ira Sprague BowenIra Sprague Bowen was an American astronomer. A graduate of Oberlin College and the California Institute of Technology, he taught physics at Caltech from 1921 to 1945...
(1898–1973), an astrophysicist whose theoretical work on evaporation to air from water bodies made first use of it, and it is used most commonly in
meteorologyMeteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting . Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the eighteenth century...
and
hydrologyHydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout Earth, and thus addresses both the hydrologic cycle and water resources...
. In this context, when the magnitude of is less than one, a greater proportion of the available energy at the surface is passed to the atmosphere as latent heat than as sensible heat, and the converse is true for values of greater than one. As , however, becomes unbounded making the Bowen ratio a poor choice of variable for use in formulae, especially for arid surfaces. For this reason the evaporative fraction is sometimes a more appropriate choice of variable representing the relative contributions of the turbulent energy fluxes to the surface energy budget.
The Bowen ratio is related to the evaporative fraction, , through the equation,
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