Abstract Daytime atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) dynamics—including potential temperature budgets, water vapour budgets, and entrainment rates—are presented from in situ flight data taken on six afternoons near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) of California during July/August 2016. The flights took place as a part of the California Baseline Ozone Transport Study aimed at investigating transport pathways of air entering the Central Valley from offshore and mixing down to the surface. Midday entrainment velocity estimates ranged from 0.8 to 5.4 cm s −1 and were derived from a combination of continuously determined ABL heights during each flight and model-derived subsidence rates, which averaged -2.0 cm s −1 in the flight region. A strong correlation was found between entrainment velocity (normalized by the convective velocity scale) and an inverse bulk ABL Richardson number, suggesting that wind shear at the ABL top plays a significant role in driving entrainment. Similarly, we found a strong correlation between the entrainment efficiency (the ratio of entrainment to surface heat fluxes with an average of 0.23 ± 0.15) and the wind speed at the ABL top. We explore the synoptic conditions that generate higher winds near the ABL top and propose that warm anomalies in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains promote increased entrainment. Additionally, a method is outlined to estimate turbulence kinetic energy, convective velocity scale ( w * ), and the surface sensible heat flux in the ABL from a slow, airborne wind measurement system using mixed-layer similarity theory.
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This content will become publicly available on January 1, 2024
Estimating turbulent energy flux vertical profiles from uncrewed aircraft system measurements: exemplary results for the MOSAiC campaign
Abstract. This study analyzes turbulent energy fluxes in the Arctic atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) using measurements with a small uncrewed aircraft system (sUAS). Turbulent fluxes constitute a major part of the atmospheric energy budget and influence the surface heat balance by distributing energy vertically in the atmosphere. However, only few in situ measurements of the vertical profile of turbulent fluxes in the Arctic ABL exist. The study presents a method to derive turbulent heat fluxes from DataHawk2 sUAS turbulence measurements, based on the flux gradient method with a parameterization of the turbulent exchange coefficient. This parameterization is derived from high-resolution horizontal wind speed measurements in combination with formulations for the turbulent Prandtl number and anisotropy depending on stability. Measurements were taken during the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition in the Arctic sea ice during the melt season of 2020. For three example cases from this campaign, vertical profiles of turbulence parameters and turbulent heat fluxes are presented and compared to balloon-borne, radar, and near-surface measurements. The combination of all measurements draws a consistent picture of ABL conditions and demonstrates the unique potential of the presented method for studying turbulent exchange processes in the vertical ABL profile with sUAS measurements.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10440787
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Atmospheric Measurement Techniques
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 1867-8548
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2297 to 2317
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Turbulence is a major source of momentum, heat, moisture, and aerosol transport in the atmosphere. Hence, it is crucial to understand and accurately characterize turbulence mechanisms in atmospheric flows. Many complex factors in the atmosphere influence the turbulence structures including stratification and background shear. However, our understanding of the interacting effects of these factors on coherent turbulence structure evolutions is still limited. In this talk, we aim to bridge this knowledge gap by using mode decomposition techniques and a wide range of large-eddy simulation (LES) data. By developing a data-driven technique, we will characterize unique features of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) turbulence under different forcing scenarios. We will present 3D LES wind speed snapshots of different ABL flows that will be used as dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) input data. Then, the obtained modes and eigenvalues will be employed to gain insights into coherent turbulence structures in ABLs. We will explain the physical meaning of dominant modes and how each mode relates to the physical cause of turbulence structures. The dominant modes, which are selected based on the mode amplitude, contain the most important spatial and temporal characteristics of the flow. We will evaluate the accuracy of the performance of this method by reconstructing the flow field with only a small number of modes, and then calculate the mean average error between the real flow and the reconstructed flow fields. We will present different data frequencies, wind speeds, and surface heat fluxes. This allows us to elucidate the modes and determine the conditions in which the mode decomposition provides more accurate results for the ABL flows. Our findings can be used to identify the major causes of turbulence in real atmospheric flows and could provide a deeper insight into the dynamics of turbulence in ABLs. Our results will also be useful for developing reduced-order models that can rapidly predict the turbulent ABL flow fields.more » « less
