CLIMATOLOGICAL CALCULATION OF SURFACE LATENT HEAT OVER CHINA^*

In the context of measurements from all the thermal balance stations over China,two methods of calculating surface latent heat for its climatic features are proposed through experiments with a range of schemes,one being the empirical type based on the relationship between ground latent heat and vapor pressure,and the other upon the Bowen ratio parameterization.Either of them has its unique merits so that they can be considered in specific case to have higher accuracy.On this basis,investigation is done of the feature of geographic distribution and annual variability of the heat across the country.