The Kwinana Coastal Fumigation Study: I – Program Overview, Experimental Design and Selected Results

Fumigation under sea-breeze conditions is a major feature of the air pollution meteorology in the coastal industrial region of Kwinana, south of Perth in Western Australia. An intensive field experiment on fumigation was carried out in the region in early 1995 with the objective of using the measured data to develop and test a shoreline fumigation model. Fumigation of plumes from the Kwinana Power Station was studied using an instrumented research aircraft, radiosonde balloons, meteorological stations, a lidar, a mobile surface sampler, and sonic anemometers. The study has yielded a detailed and high quality data set as a result of both the range of observations undertaken and of the regularity of the sea-breeze conditions under scrutiny. The details of the experiment are summarised in this paper and some typical results are presented.     

Local similarity relationships in a horizontally inhomogeneous boundary layer

Local similarity theory, an analogy to the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory, is successfully applied to airborne observations in a coastal area of South Australia. The boundary layer over this highly non-uniform surface is characterized by extensive variations in its thermal stratification and turbulence characteristics. However, the behaviour of some statistical parameters of second- and higher moments seems to be determined mainly by local forcing, while horizontal advection plays a less important role. For these parameters, local scaling is effective. It is shown that the dimensionless variances of vertical velocity and potential temperature are functions of z/ only, where is the local Monin-Obukhov length and z is the height above ground. The dimensionless variance of horizontal velocity components is found to depend on h/, where h is the height of the oundary layer. Similarity relationships for some triple correlations are also discussed. The empirically determined local similarity relationships are found to agree with those obtained from surface-layer similarity. Finally, to illustrate the complexity of the local forcing, distributions of vertical energy and momentum fluxes, from which the local scaling parameters are derived, are shown.     

Could alluvial knickpoint retreat rather than fire drive the loss of alluvial wet monsoon forest,tropical northern Australia?

Drainage rejuvenation through headward migration of alluvial knickpoints is common in ephemeral semi‐arid streams, but has not yet been described for tropical rivers. In the Australian monsoon tropics (AMT), wet monsoon forests have an important ecological function, and are present along many alluvial valleys and springs within a eucalypt‐savanna dominated landscape. Using a combination of LiDAR, remote sensing and field evidence, we observe the ongoing destruction of wet monsoon forest through hydro‐geomorphic feedbacks, along with the headward retreat of an alluvial knickpoint at Wangi Creek in Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory. Due to the highly transmissive shallow aquifer along the lower Wangi Creek, this knickpoint retreat leads to a downstream drop in in‐channel water level, which in turn drives a decrease in the local groundwater table. The lowered groundwater level causes the shallow anabranches and formerly water saturated peaty floodplain soil to desiccate, which results in a reduction of vegetation density. The resulting dry surface conditions allow annual to bi‐annual high frequency low‐intensity fires to affect the monsoon forest, while wet rainforest upstream of the knickpoint remains intact. In this paper, we argue that such hydro‐geomorphic feedbacks may cause the initial destabilization of the forest, which then provides the necessary conditions for the impact of fire. This scenario thus challenges the prevalent view that fire is a first‐order control on the spatial extent of wet monsoonal rainforest in the study area, and provides a new and testable hypothesis for further studies in the AMT. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The NAFE’06 data set: Towards soil moisture retrieval at intermediate resolution

The National Airborne Field Experiment 2006 (NAFE’06) was conducted during a three week period of November 2006 in the Murrumbidgee River catchment, located in southeastern Australia. One objective of NAFE’06 was to explore the suitability of the area for SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) calibration/validation and develop downscaling and assimilation techniques for when SMOS does come on line. Airborne L-band brightness temperature was mapped at 1 km resolution 11 times (every 1–3 days) over a 40 by 55 km area in the Yanco region and 3 times over a 40 by 50 km area that includes Kyeamba Creek catchment. Moreover, multi-resolution, multi-angle and multi-spectral airborne data including surface temperature, surface reflectance (green, read and near infrared), lidar data and aerial photos were acquired over selected areas to develop downscaling algorithms and test multi-angle and multi-spectral retrieval approaches. The near-surface soil moisture was measured extensively on the ground in eight sampling areas concurrently with aircraft flights, and the soil moisture profile was continuously monitored at 41 sites. Preliminary analyses indicate that (i) the uncertainty of a single ground measurement was typically less than 5% vol. (ii) the spatial variability of ground measurements at 1 km resolution was up to 10% vol. and (iii) the validation of 1 km resolution L-band data is facilitated by selecting pixels with a spatial soil moisture variability lower than the point-scale uncertainty. The sensitivity of passive microwave and thermal data is also compared at 1 km resolution to illustrate the multi-spectral synergy for soil moisture monitoring at improved accuracy and resolution. The data described in this paper are available at www.nafe.unimelb.edu.au.     

Lidar atmospheric measurements on Mars and Earth

The LIDAR instrument operating from the surface of Mars on the Phoenix Mission measured vertical profiles of atmospheric dust and water ice clouds at temperatures around −65 °C. An equivalent lidar system was utilized for measurements in the atmosphere of Earth where dust and cloud conditions are similar to Mars. Coordinated aircraft in situ sampling provided a verification of lidar measurement and analysis methods and also insight for interpretation of lidar derived optical parameters in terms of the dust and cloud microphysical properties. It was found that the vertical distribution of airborne dust above the Australian desert is quite similar to what is observed in the planetary boundary layer above Mars. Comparison with the in situ sampling is used to demonstrate how the lidar derived optical extinction coefficient is related to the dust particle size distribution. The lidar measurement placed a constraint on the model size distribution that has been used for Mars. Airborne lidar measurements were also conducted to study cirrus clouds that form in the Earth’s atmosphere at a similar temperature and humidity as the clouds observed with the lidar on Mars. Comparison with the in situ sampling provides a method to derive the cloud ice water content (IWC) from the Mars lidar measurements.     

Emplacement age of the Markagunt gravity slide in southwestern Utah,USA

The Markagunt gravity slide (MGS) is a large-volume landslide in southwestern Utah that originated within the Oligocene-Miocene Marysvale volcanic field. Gravity slides are single emplacement events with long runout distances and are now recognized as a new class of volcanic hazard. Accumulation of volcanic material on a structurally weak substrate along with voluminous shallow intrusive events led to collapse. Here, ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar data for landslide-generated pseudotachylyte, the landslide-capping Haycock Mountain Tuff and the deformed Osiris Tuff are combined with a Bayesian age model to determine an emplacement age of 23.05 + 0.22/−0.20 Ma for the MGS. The results suggest a lag time of <200 kyr between the caldera-forming eruption of the Osiris Tuff, additional buildup of the unstable volcanic pile and subsequent mass movement.