Background

Kitsiri Weligepolage is a PhD student at the Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente and a senior engineer water resource planning, at the Department of Irrigation, Sri Lanka.

He obtained a B.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka in 1993. He joined the Department of Irrigation in 1995 as an Irrigation Engineer, and involved in designs, construction, operation and maintenance work of several major and medium scale irrigation projects. In 1998 he obtained his full professional qualifications from the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka as a charted civil engineer. Since 1999 he is working as a planning engineer, attached the water resources and project planning branch of the Irrigation Department.

In 2005, he earned a Masters degree in Geo-information Science and Earth Observation in the field of Water Resources and Environmental Management at the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) the Netherlands. His main research interests are surface energy balance modeling, quantitative remote sensing and spatial hydrology.

Title: Parameterization of roughness lengths for momentum and heat transfer in heterogeneous landscapes using multi-angular measurements.

Abstract

Numerical atmospheric simulation models are widely being used for short term operational weather forecasting and long term climate change analysis. However the different physical processes which govern the earth climate system are still very much simplified in today�s NWP and climate simulations. The lack of realistic parameterization schemes for processes such as exchange of fluxes between the land surface and atmosphere is a huge impediment to improve the performance of these models. Meanwhile a significant progress has been made by the remote sensing community by developing variety of methods to estimate the exchange of surface fluxes based on remotely sensed data.

One of the major problems associated with the existing remote sensing methods for flux parameterization is that, they have not paid enough attention to develop robust methods to analyze the surface heterogeneity but more often have used semi-empirical relationships and assumptions, particularly in the procedures to calculate the surface roughness; both the aerodynamic roughness length (z0m) and the thermodynamic roughness length (z0h).

This research aims to develop a physically based parameterization methodology which will be applied for the estimation of the roughness length for momentum and heat transfer focussing on the operational application to large scale data. Furthermore, obtaining the full advantage of the directional radiometric observations, to develop new algorithms for surface energy balance, incorporating the improved parameterization to estimate resistance for momentum and heat transfer.

Publications

ISI Journal Articles

Weligepolage, K., Gieske, A.S.M. and Su, Z. (2012) Surface roughness analysis of a conifer forest canopy with airborne and terrestrial laser scanning techniques. In: International journal of applied earth observation and geoinformation : JAG, 14 (2012)1 pp. 192-203. Full text | Full text

Conference Proceedings (full papers)

Timmermans, J., van der Tol, C., Weligepolage, K., Vekerdy, Z., Jia, L. and Su, Z. (2007) BRDFs acquired by directional radiative measurements during EALE and AGRISAR. In: Proceedings of the AGRISAR and EAGLE campaigns, final workshop, 15-16 October, 2007. ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. ESA, 2007 (ESA Proceedings WPP-279) 6 p. Full text

Timmermans, W.J., Dost, R.J.J., Timmermans, J., Weligepolage, K. and Blenke, A.H.B. (2007) Energy budget from large aperture scintillometry during AGRISAR2006. In: Proceedings of the AGRISAR and EAGLE campaigns, final workshop, 15-16 October, 2007. ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. ESA, 2007. (ESA Proceedings WPP-279) 8 p. Full text

Presentations

Timmermans, J., Weligepolage, K., Timmermans, W.J., Dost, R.J.J. and Blenke, A.H.B. (2007) BRDFs acquired by directional radiative measurements during AGRISAR2006 : abstract. Presented at AgriSAR and EAGLE Campaigns Final Workshop, 15-16 October 2007, ESA, ESTEC, Noordwijk. 1 p. Full text

Timmermans, J., van der Tol, C., Weligepolage, K., Jia, L., Vekerdy, Z. and Su, Z. (2007) Optical and thermal directional signatures of typical Dutch vegetation : abstract. Presented at AgriSAR and EAGLE Campaigns Final Workshop, 15-16 October 2007, ESA, ESTEC, Noordwijk. 1 p. Full text

Timmermans, J., Verhoef, W., Weligepolage, K., van der Tol, C. and Su, Z. (2007) Simulation of Sentinel 2 using AHS data : abstract. Presented at AgriSAR and EAGLE Campaigns Final Workshop, 15-16 October 2007, ESA, ESTEC, Noordwijk. 1 p. Full text

MSc theses

Weligepolage, K. (2005) Estimation of spatial and temporal distribution of evapotranspiration by satellite remote sensing : a case study in Hupselsebeek, The Netherlands. Enschede, ITC, 2005. Full text