Classifying the nocturnal atmospheric boundary layer into temperature and flow regimes
Abstract
We propose a classification scheme for nocturnal atmospheric boundary layers and apply it to investigate the spatio‐temporal structure of air temperature and wind speed in a shallow valley during the Shallow Cold Pool Experiment. This field campaign was the first to collect spatially continuous temperature and wind information at high resolution (1 s, 0.25 m) using the distributed temperature sensing technique across a 220 m long transect at three heights (0.5, 1.0, 2.0 m). The night‐time classification scheme was motivated by a surface energy balance and used a combination of static stability, wind regime and longwave radiative forcing as quantities to determine physically meaningful boundary‐layer regimes. Out of all potential combinations of these three quantities, 14 night‐time classes contained observations, of which we selected three for detailed analysis and comparison.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1002/qj.3508
Entities
People
- Chadi Sayde
- Christoph Thomas
- John S. Selker
- Karl Lapo
- L. Mahrt
- Lena Pfister
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- National Science Foundation
- North Carolina State University
- Northwest Research Associates
- Oregon State University
- University of Bayreuth