Analysis of energy balance components as a function of orography and land use and comparison of results with the distribution of variables influencing local climate

During 1992 and 1995 in the Upper Rhine valley between Karlsruhe in the nor th and Basel in the south 36 energy balance stations were installed to anal yze the spatial and temporal behavior of the components of the energy balan ce. A second aim of the project 'Regio-Klima-Projekt' (REKLIP) was to study the dependence of climatic variables on the energy balance. Three main inf luences on spatial variation in energy balance components were detected: or ography, precipitation and land use. Concerning the dependence of the clima tic variables on the energy balance it can be stated that the mean diurnal amplitude of temperature shows a good correlation with the mean diurnal sen sible heat flux, while the diurnal amplitude of the specific humidity corre lates with the mean diurnal latent heat flux. Both these results are in goo d agreement with theoretical considerations. Consequently, areas with enhan ced sensible heat flux values show higher monthly mean temperature maxima a nd also a greater numbers of summer days, while areas with higher latent he at flux values indicate enhanced monthly mean humidity maxima.