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Abstract The measured variations in the turbulent static pressure structure function with scale in the roughness sublayer above a subarctic forest are empirically shown to exhibit exponents that are smaller than predicted for the inertial subrange (ISR). Three hypotheses are offered to explain these deviations. The first is based on conventional intermittency correction to the averaged turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, the second is based on shearing introducing deviations from locally isotropic state that must be sensed by both velocity and pressure structure functions, and the third is based on large and inertial scale pressure interactions that persist at values of within the resolvable ISR. The third hypothesis is shown to yield superior results, which allows a new formulation for to be derived that accommodates such finite interactions. 

Abstract The turbulent static pressure spectrum as a function of longitudinal wavenumber in the roughness sublayer of forested canopies is of interest to a plethora of problems such as pressure transport in the turbulent kinetic energy budget, pressure pumping from snow or forest floor, and coupling between flow within and above canopies. Long term static pressure measurements above a sub‐arctic forested canopy for near‐neutral conditions during the winter and spring were collected and analyzed for three snow cover conditions: trees and ground covered with snow, trees are snow free but the ground is covered with snow, and snow free cover. In all three cases, it is shown that obeys the attached eddy hypothesis at low wavenumbers —with and Kolmogorov scaling in the inertial subrange at higher wavenumbers—with , where is the friction velocity at the canopy top, is the mean turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, is the distance from the snow top, and is the boundary layer depth. The implications of these two scaling laws to the normalized root‐mean squared pressure and its newly proposed logarithmic scaling with normalized wall‐normal distance are discussed for snow covered and snow free vegetation conditions. The work here also shows that the in the appears more extensive and robust than its longitudinal velocity counterpart.