Influences of diurnal rainfall cycle on CO2 exchange over Bornean tropical rainforests

In the Southeast Asian tropics, distinct peaks of the diurnal precipitation cycle at specific times of the day are among the dominant features of environmental factors. Although the characteristics of rainfall timing during the day are anticipated to affect the ecosystem CO2 flux (N-E), no attempt has been made to quantify the impact. To address this issue, the potential alteration of N-E corresponding to a change in the diurnal rainfall regime was investigated using a combination of detailed field measurements conducted at an eddy flux observation site, computation with a multilayer soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer model, and rainfall time series constructed from rainfall statistics of observation-site data and published data of long-term diurnal precipitation cycles over Borneo. The results showed that there was little difference in the mean diurnal N-E pattern between "wet" and "dry" days (days with and without rainfall, respectively) and the diurnal rainfall regime little affected N-E on a whole-year scale. Similar N-E values for wet and dry days might be attributed to (1) a minor contribution of lower N-E during rainfall events to total N-E in wet conditions, because of constant cloud cover on both wet and dry days and (2) the light saturation of N-E at relatively low incident radiative energy (approximate to 500 W m(-2) of solar radiation) in this forest ecosystem. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.