An Observational Study of the Mesoscale Mistral Dynamics

We investigate the mesoscale dynamics of the mistral through the wind profiler observations of the MAP (autumn 1999) and ESCOMPTE (summer 2001) field campaigns. We show that the mistral wind field can dramatically change on a time scale less than 3 hours. Transitions from a deep to a shallow mistral are often observed at any season when the lower layers are stable. The variability, mainly attributed in summer to the mistral/land–sea breeze interactions on a 10-km scale, is highlighted by observations from the wind profiler network set up during ESCOMPTE. The interpretations of the dynamical mistral structure are performed through comparisons with existing basic theories. The linear theory of R. B. Smith [Advances in Geophysics, Vol. 31, 1989, Academic Press, 1–41] and the shallow water theory [Schär, C. and Smith, R. B.: 1993a, J. Atmos. Sci. 50, 1373–1400] give some complementary explanations for the deep-to-shallow transition especially for the MAP mistral event. The wave breaking process induces a low-level jet (LLJ) downstream of the Alps that degenerates into a mountain wake, which in turn provokes the cessation of the mistral downstream of the Alps. Both theories indicate that the flow splits around the Alps and results in a persistent LLJ at the exit of the Rhône valley. The LLJ is strengthened by the channelling effect of the Rhône valley that is more efficient for north-easterly than northerly upstream winds despite the north–south valley axis. Summer moderate and weak mistral episodes are influenced by land–sea breezes and convection over land that induce a very complex interaction that cannot be accurately described by the previous theories.     

Atmospheric boundary-layer structure observed during a haze event due to forest-fire smoke

During a haze event in Baltimore, U.S.A. from July 6 to 8, 2002, smoke from forest fires in the Québec region (Canada), degraded air quality and impacted upon local climate, decreasing solar radiation and air temperature. The smoke particles in and above the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) served as a tracer and provided a unique opportunity to investigate the ABL structure, especially entrainment. Elastic backscatter lidar measurements taken during the haze event distinctly reveal the downward sweeps (or wisps) of smoke-laden air from the free atmosphere into the ABL. Visualisations of mechanisms such as dry convection, the entrainment process, detrainment, coherent entrainment structures, and mixing inside the ABL, are presented. Thermals overshooting at the ABL top are shown to create disturbances in the form of gravity waves in the free atmosphere aloft, as evidenced by a corresponding ripple structure at the bottom of the smoke layer. Lidar data, aerosol ground-based measurements and supporting meteorological data are used to link free atmosphere, mixed-layer and ground-level aerosols. During the peak period of the haze event (July 7, 2002), the correlation between time series of elastic backscatter lidar data within the mixed layer and the scattering coefficient from a nephelometer at ground level was found to be high (R=0.96 for z =324 m, and R=0.89 for z=504 m). Ground-level aerosol concentration was at a maximum about 2 h after the smoke layer intersected with the growing ABL, confirming that the wisps do not initially reach the ground.     

Flux–Profile Relationships Over a Fetch Limited Beech Forest

The influence of an internal boundary layer and a roughness sublayer on flux–profile relationships for momentum and sensible heat have been investigated for a closed beech forest canopy with limited fetch conditions. The influence was quantified by derivation of local scaling functions for sensible heat flux and momentum (_h and _m) and analysed as a function of atmospheric stability and fetch. For heat, the influences of the roughness sublayer and the internal boundary layer were in agreement with previous studies. For momentum, the strong vertical gradient of the flow just above the canopy top for some wind sectors led to an increase in _m, a feature that has not previously been observed. For a fetch of 500 m over the beech forest during neutral atmospheric conditions, there is no height range at the site where profiles can be expected to be logarithmic with respect to the local surface. The different influence of the roughness sublayer on _h and _m is reflected in the aerodynamic resistance for the site. The aerodynamic resistance for sensible heat is considerably smaller than the corresponding value for momentum.     

The Summer Surface Energy Balance of the High Antarctic Plateau

The summertime surface energy balance (SEB) at Kohnen station, situated on the high Antarctic plateau (75°00′ S, 0°04′ E, 2892m above sea level) is presented for the period of 8 January to 9 February 2002. Shortwave and longwave radiation fluxes were measured directly; the former was corrected for problems associated with the cosine response of the instrument. Sensible and latent heat fluxes were calculated using the bulk method, and eddy-correlation measurements and the modified Bowen ratio method were used to verify these calculated fluxes. The calculated sub-surface heat flux was checked by comparing calculated to measured snow temperatures. Uncertainties in the measurements and energy-balance calculations are discussed. The general meteorological conditions were not extraordinary during the period of the experiment, with a mean 2-m air temperature of −27.5°C, specific humidity of 0.52×10⁻³kg kg⁻¹ and wind speed of 4.1ms⁻¹. The experiment covered the transition period from Antarctic summer (positive net radiation) to winter (negative net radiation), and as a result the period mean net radiation, sensible heat, latent heat and sub-surface heat fluxes were small with values of −1.1, 0.0, −1.0 and 0.7 Wm⁻², respectively. Daily mean net radiation peaked on cloudy days (16 Wm⁻²) and was negative on clear-sky days (minimum of −19 W m⁻²). Daily mean sensible heat flux ranged from −8 to +10 Wm⁻², latent heat flux from −4 to 0 Wm⁻² and sub-surface heat flux from −8 to +7 Wm⁻².     

The Summer Arctic Boundary Layer during the Arctic Ocean Experiment 2001 (AOE-2001)

Boundary-layer measurements made from the Swedish icebreaker Oden during the Arctic Ocean Experiment 2001 (AOE-2001) are analysed. They refer mainly to ice drift in the central Arctic during the period 2–21 August 2001. On board Oden a remote sensing array with a wind profiler, cloud radar and a scanning microwave radiometer, and a regular weather station operated continuously; soundings were also released during research stations. Turbulence and profile measurements on an 18-m mast were deployed on the ice, along with two sodar systems, a microbarograph array and a tethered sounding system. Surface flux and meteorological stations were also deployed on nearby ice floes. There is a clear diurnal cycle in radiation and also in wind speed, cloud base and visibility. It is absent in temperature and humidity, probably due to the very strong control by melting/ freezing ice and snow. In the advection of warm air, latent heat of melting maintains the surface temperature at 0 °C, while with a negative energy balance the latent heat of freezing of the salty ocean water acts to maintain the surface temperature > −2 °C. The constant presence of water at the surface maintains a relative humidity close to 100%, and this is also often facilitated by an increasing specific humidity through the capping inversion, making entrainment a moisture source. This ensures cloudy conditions, with low cloud and fog prevailing most of the time. Intrusions of warm and moist air from beyond the ice edge are frequent, but the local Arctic boundary layer remains at a relatively constant temperature, and is shallow and well mixed with strong capping inversions. Power spectra of surface-layer wind speed sometimes show large variance at low frequency. A scanning radiometer provides a monitoring of the vertical thermal structure with a spatial and temporal resolution not seen before in the Arctic. There are often two inversions, an elevated main inversion and a weak surface inversion, and occasionally additional inversions occur. Enhanced entrainment across the main inversion appears to occur during frontal passages. Variance of the scanning radiometer temperatures occurs in large pulses rather than varying smoothly, and the height to the maximum variance appears to be a reasonable proxy for the boundary-layer depth.     

‘A Case Study on a Polar Cold Air Outbreak over Fram Strait using a Mesoscale Weather Prediction Model’

The mesoscale weather prediction model ’Lokal-Modell’ (LM) of the Deutscher Wetterdienst is applied to the situation of an Arctic cold air outbreak in the Fram Strait region in April 1998. Observations are available from a flight along 5⁰E carried out during the ARTIST campaign. Initial and time-dependent boundary data for the simulation are taken from a larger scale operational model system. Using the standard configuration of LM, the simulation reproduced the propagation of cold air and the characteristic structure of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) in fair agreement with the observations. However, a detailed comparison revealed three basic problems. Firstly, there is evidence that the available data on sea-ice conditions were insufficient approximations to the true state for several reasons. A modification of the sea-ice data towards observations revealed that parts of the discrepancies were due to the original sea-ice data. Secondly, a control run with the model in its standard configuration shows an insufficient warming of the ABL downstream of the ice edge due to underestimation of surface heat fluxes. A simple modification of the approach for the scalar roughness length resulted in the strongest benefit, while comparative studies showed only a slight sensitivity to different types of parametrisation of turbulent mixing or the inclusion of an additional moist convection parametrisation. Thirdly, in all the simulations the deepening of the convective ABL downstream of the ice edge is weaker than observed. This may be partly due to the thermal stratification above the ABL in the analysis data, which is more stable than observed; but it may also be a hint to the fact that processes near the inversion are insufficiently parametrised in mesoscale models with resolutions as used in LM. The simulated cloud layer in the convective ABL is similar to that observed with respect to condensate content, a sharply defined cloud top, a diffuse lower bound, and continuous light precipitation.     

Boundary-Layer Adjustment Over Small-Scale Changes of Surface Heat Flux

Four months of eddy correlation data collected over a grass field and a nearby sage brush community are analyzed to examine the adjustment of the boundary-layer structure as it flows from the heated brush to the snow-covered grass. The grass site includes a 34-m tower with seven levels of eddy correlation data. The midday heat flux over the snow-covered grass and bare ground surfaces is often downward particularly with melting conditions, while the corresponding heat flux over the brush is almost always upward. For most of these cases, a stable internal boundary layer over the snow is well defined in terms of vertical profiles of the buoyancy flux over the snow-covered grass. The stable internal boundary layer is generally embedded within a deeper layer of flux divergence corresponding to increasing upward heat flux with height above the internal boundary layer. With thin snow cover, the surface heat flux over the grass is weak upward due to heating of grass protruding above the snow so that the flow adjusts to a decrease of the upward surface heat flux in the downwind direction. This common case of an adjusting boundary layer contrasts with the formation of an internal boundary layer due to a change of sign of the surface heat in flux the downwind direction. The adjustment of the boundary layer to the decrease of the surface heat flux leads to vertical divergence of the upward heat flux in contrast to the usual heated boundary layer over homogeneous surfaces. The consequences of the cooling due to the vertical divergence of the heat flux are discussed in terms of the heat budget of the adjusting and internal boundary layers.     

Sodar Detected Top-Down Convection in a Nocturnal Cloud-Topped Boundary Layer: A Case Study

Nocturnal convection, originating in a well-mixed marine cloud-topped boundary layer, advected onshore, was observed using a Doppler sodar on the Tyrrhenian coast in Italy. The horizontal and vertical dimensions of the downdrafts were evaluated. The oscillation frequency triggered by the downdrafts at the inversion layer, derived from the harmonic analysis of the sodar measured vertical velocity (w), is compared with the Brunt-Vaisala frequency, obtained from the rawinsonde temperature profile. A similarity function for the ²_w vertical profile was used to fit the sodar experimental data and to retrieve the depth of the mixing layer and the sensible heat flux at the top of the cloud layer. The results are in agreement with the convection layer depth observed in the sodar echoes facsimile record, and with the energy budget evaluated at the top of the cloud layer using the rawinsonde profiles.     

Summer boundary-layer height at the plateau site of Dome’C,antarctica

Measurements of the mean and turbulent structure of the planetary boundary layer using a sodar and a sonic anemometer, and radiative measurements using a radiometer, were carried out in the summer of 1999–2000 at the Antarctic plateau station of Dome C during a two-month period. At Dome C strong ground-based inversions dominate for most of the year. However, in spite of the low surface temperatures (between −50 and −20 °C), and the surface always covered by snow and ice, a regular daytime boundary-layer evolution, similar to that observed at mid-latitudes, was observed during summertime. The mixed-layer height generally reaches 200–300 m at 1300–1400 LST in high summer (late December, early January); late in the summer (end of January to February), as the solar elevation decreases, it reduces to 100–200 m. A comparison between the mixed-layer height estimated from sodar measurements and that calculated using a mixed-layer growth model shows a rather satisfactory agreement if we assign a value of 0.01–0.02 m s⁻¹ to the subsidence velocity at the top of the mixed layer, and a value of 0.003–0.004 K m⁻¹ to the potential temperature gradient above the mixed layer.     

Measurements of Flows Over Isolated Valleys

Wind-tunnel measurements of the flow over an isolated valley both normal and at an angle (45°) to a simulated neutrally stable atmospheric boundary layer are presented. Attention is concentrated on the nature of the flow within the valley itself. The work formed part of a wider study that included detailed field measurements around an African desert valley and some limited comparisons with that work are included. A scale of about 1:1000 was used for the laboratory work, in which an appropriate combination of hot wire and particle image velocimetry was employed. For a valley normal to the upwind flow, it is shown that the upstream influence of the valley extends to a distance of at least one half of the axial valley width upstream of the leading edge, whereas differences in mean flow and turbulence could be identified well beyond two valley widths from the downwind edge. Non-normal wind angles lead to significant along-valley flows within the valley and, even at two valley heights above the valley ridge level, there remains a significant spanwise flow component. Downwind turbulence levels are somewhat lower in this case, but are still considerably higher than in the undisturbed boundary layer. At both flow angles, there are significant recirculation regions within the valleys, starting from mean separation just beyond the leading edge, but the strong spanwise flow in the 45° case reduces the axial extent of the separated zone. The flow is shown to be in some ways analogous to flow over an isolated hill. Our results usefully enhance the field data and could be used to improve modelling of saltation processes in the field.