Weighted mean method for eddy covariance flux measurement

The study to monitor the exchange of energy, water vapor and carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystem has been carried out with eddy covariance method throughout the world. The monitored exchange quantity, named flux F , is conventionally determined by a mean of 1 hr or 30 min interval because no technique have been fortified to directly measure a momentary F itself at an instant of time. Therefore, the posterior analysis with this sampling should be paid attention to those spatial or temporal averaging and summation in the consideration of the sampling uncertainty. In particular, the averaging calcurated by arithmetic mean Fa might be inappropriate because the sample F used in this averaging has nonidentical inherent quality within one another according to different micrometeorological and ecophysiological conditions while those are observed under the same instruments. To overcome this issue, we propose the weighted mean Fw using a relative sampling error estimated by a sampling F and its error, and introduce Fw performance tested with EC measurements for 3 years at tangerine orchard.