Scintillometers are used to estimate path-integrated evaporation and sensible heat fluxes. Commercial microwave links (CMLs), such as are used in cellular telecommunication networks, are similar line-of-sight instruments that also measure signal intensity of microwave signals, just like microwave scintillometers do. However, CMLs are not designed to capture scintillation fluctuations. Here, we investigate if and under what conditions CMLs can be used to obtain the structure parameter of the refractive index, Cnn, which would be a first step in computing turbulent heat fluxes with CMLs using scintillation theory. We use data from three collocated microwave links installed over an 856 m path at the Ruisdael Observatory near Cabauw, the Netherlands. Two of these links are 38 GHz CMLs formerly employed in telecom networks in the Netherlands, a Nokia Flexihopper and an Ericsson MiniLink. We compare Cnn estimates obtained from the received signal intensity of these links, sampled at 20 Hz, with those obtained from measurements of a 160 GHz microwave scintillometer (RPG-MWSC) sampled at 1 kHz and with those of an eddy-covariance system. After comparison of the unprocessed Cnn, we rejected the Ericsson MiniLink because its 0.5 dB power quantization (i.e. the discretization of the signal intensity) was found to be too coarse to be applied as a scintillometer. Based on the power spectra of the Nokia Flexihopper and the microwave scintillometer, we propose two methods to correct for the white noise present in the signal of the Nokia Flexihopper: (1) we apply a high-pass filter and subtract a low quantile of the resulting variances of the Nokia Flexihopper and (2) we correct for the noise by comparing with a microwave scintillometer (MWS) and select the parts of the power spectra where the Nokia Flexihopper behaves in correspondence with scintillation theory, also considering different crosswind conditions, and correct for the underrepresented part of the scintillation spectrum based on theoretical scintillation spectra. The comparison and noise determination with the microwave scintillometer provide the best-possible Cnn estimates for the Nokia Flexihopper, although this method is not feasible in operational settings for CMLs. Both of our proposed methods show an improvement in Cnn estimates in comparison to uncorrected estimates, albeit with larger uncertainty than when using the reference instruments. Our study illustrates the potential for using CMLs as scintillometers but also outlines some major drawbacks, most of which are related to unfavourable design choices made for CMLs. If these were overcome, given their global coverage, there is potential for CMLs to perform large-scale evaporation monitoring.

As the spatial coverage of evaporation observations is limited, we propose a novel, opportunistic method to estimate evaporation in which we consider commercial microwave links (CMLs), such as used in cellular telecommunication networks, in combination with scintillometry. Scintillometers are dedicated instruments to measure path-integrated latent and sensible heat fluxes, transmitting electromagnetic radiation that is diffracted by turbulent eddies between transmitter and receiver, causing the so-called scintillation effect. CMLs are line-of-sight devices that transmit electromagnetic radiation at similar frequencies as microwave scintillometers. However, CMLs and their sampling strategies are designed to ensure a continuously functioning wireless communication network rather than to capture the scintillation effect. Here, we estimate 30 min latent heat fluxes and daily evaporation using a former CML. To do so, we use data of a 38 GHz Nokia CML (formerly part of a telecom network) installed over an 856 m path at the Ruisdael Observatory near Cabauw, the Netherlands. We compare our results with estimates from an optical and microwave scintillometer setup, as well as an EC system. To obtain the flux estimates using the CML, we apply the two-wavelength method, in combination with the optical scintillometer, as well as a standalone energy-balance method (EBM), requiring net radiation estimates. For comparison, we also consider the free-convection limit of Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (MOST), instead of the complete scaling. An advantage of this approach is that it does not require horizontal wind speed measurements, which are more difficult to obtain in complex environments. For the net radiation estimates, we use in-situ measured radiation and data products provided by the Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF) of EUMETSAT. Considering both turbulent heat fluxes, the two-wavelength method outperforms the EBM. The standalone EBM shows a reasonable performance, but also a large dependence on the quality of the net radiation estimates. When aggregating our 30 min latent heat fluxes to daily evaporation estimates, the relative performance of the methods remains comparable to that at 30 min intervals. These daily evaporation estimates could also be useful for catchment hydrological applications. Application of the free-convection scaling instead of the complete MOST scaling results in a comparable performance for all methods.

Terrestrial microwave links are increasingly being used to estimate path-averaged precipitation by determining the attenuation caused by rainfall along the link path, mostly with commercial microwave links from cellular telecommunication networks. However, the temporal resolution of these rainfall estimates and the method to derive them are often determined by the temporal sampling strategy that is employed by the mobile network operators. Currently, the links are most often sampled at a temporal resolution of 15 min with a recording of the minimum and maximum values, while more recently, a form of instantaneous sampling with possible intervals up to 1 s has also been set up. For rainfall research purposes, often high temporal resolutions in combination with averaged values are preferred. However, it is uncertain how these various temporal sampling strategies affect the estimated rainfall intensity. Here we aim to understand how temporal sampling strategies affect the measured rainfall intensities using microwave links. To do so, we use data from three collocated microwave links, two 38 GHz and one 26 GHz, sampled at 20 Hz and covering a 2.2 km path over the city of Wageningen, the Netherlands. We aggregate the microwave link power levels to multiple time intervals (1 s to 60 min) and use a mean, instantaneous, and minimum and maximum value to characterize the signal. Based on the aggregated data, we compute rainfall intensities and compare these with 20 Hz rainfall estimates, such that we isolate errors and uncertainties caused by the sampling strategies from instrumental effects, such as different biases between instruments and representativeness errors. In general, our results show that for all sampling strategies, an increase in sampling time interval reduces the performance of the rainfall estimates, which especially holds for the instantaneous sampling strategy. Even the mean sampling strategy, which generally performs best of all strategies, is sensitive to this reduction in temporal resolution and could lead to significant underestimations. This sensitivity of the mean sampling to the temporal resolution seems to be largely affected by the non-linear relation between attenuation and rainfall. The min–max sampling strategy is mostly prone to minor underestimations or large overestimations of the path-averaged rainfall intensities. Moreover, our results, including a comparison with theoretical events, show that the attenuation due to wet antennas not only affects the comparison between the rainfall estimates obtained with a microwave link and another reference instrument but also has a significant influence on the performance of the rainfall retrieval algorithm, especially for devices with relatively long duration of the wet-antenna attenuation combined with the longer sampling time intervals. Overall, this study demonstrates the effect a selected sampling strategy can have on rainfall intensity estimates using (commercial) microwave links.

The representation of snow processes in most large-scale hydrological and climate models is known to introduce considerable uncertainty into the predictions and projections of water availability. During the critical snowmelt period, the main challenge in snow modeling is that net radiation is spatially highly variable for a patchy snow cover, resulting in large horizontal differences in temperatures and heat fluxes. When a wind blows over such a system, these differences can drive advection of sensible and latent heat from the snow-free areas to the snow patches, potentially enhancing the melt rates at the leading edge and increasing the variability of subgrid melt rates. To get more insight into these processes, we examine the melt along the upwind and downwind edges of a 50 m long snow patch in the Finseelvi catchment, Norway, and try to explain the observed behavior with idealized simulations of heat fluxes and air movement over patchy snow. The melt of the snow patch was monitored from 11 June until 15 June 2019 by making use of height maps obtained through the photogrammetric structure-from-motion principle. A vertical melt of 23 ± 2.0 cm was observed at the upwind edge over the course of the field campaign, whereas the downwind edge melted only 3 ± 0.4 cm. When comparing this with meteorological measurements, we estimate the turbulent heat fluxes to be responsible for 60 % to 80 % of the upwind melt, of which a significant part is caused by the latent heat flux. The melt at the downwind edge approximately matches the melt occurring due to net radiation. To better understand the dominant processes, we represented this behavior in idealized direct numerical simulations, which are based on the measurements on a single snow patch by and resemble a flat, patchy snow cover with typical snow patch sizes of 15, 30, and 60 m. Using these simulations, we found that the reduction of the vertical temperature gradient over the snow patch was the main cause of the reductions in vertical sensible heat flux over distance from the leading edge, independent of the typical snow patch size. Moreover, we observed that the sensible heat fluxes at the leading edge and the decay over distance were independent of snow patch size as well, which resulted in a 15 % and 25 % reduction in average snowmelt for, respectively, a doubling and quadrupling of the typical snow patch size. These findings lay out pathways to include the effect of highly variable turbulent heat fluxes based on the typical snow patch size in large-scale hydrological and climate models to improve snowmelt modeling.