East Asia and Western Pacific METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATE

251
INTRODUCTION TO HEIHE BASIN FEILD EXPERIMENT (HEIFE)
— ATMOSPHERE-LAND SURFACE INTERACTIONS PROGRAM
Lin Hai
(National Natural Science Foundation of China)
ABSTRACT
In 1987, the National Natural Science Foundation of
China approved a major program "Atmosphere-Land Surface
Interactions of Heine Basin Field Experiment in Weastern
China (HEIFE)" proposed by the Lanzhou Institute of
Plateau Atmospheric Physics, Academia Sinica. The HEIFE
is one of the pilot land surface process experiments for
the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). It is an
interdisciplinary project combining basic theoretical
study with applied research. The HEIFE program started
in 1988 and lasts for at least 5 years. A pilot field
observation already implemented in the period from
August to September 1988.
The general objectives of the Heihe Basin Feild
Experiment are to investigate the physical processes of
the air-land exchanges of water, heat and momentum in
desert and agricultural irrigation regions of the midlatitudes,
test and improve the parameterization scheme
of such fluxes in GCM for the grid square of arid and
semi-arid regions of the mid-latitudes. It will also
collect the necessary ground-based data for developing
and validating the methods to convert satellite-observed
radiances to land-surface natures and climatological
variables. Because of the special geographical
environment of the experimental area, the investigations
of the concentration and particle size distribution of
atmospheric dust over desert, its dispersion and
transport and its effects on the radiative transfer will
be included in this program.
In this paper, the scientific problems, subjects,
observational plan and prospective results will be
introduced briefly.