ALBERT

Description: Due to the major role of the sun in heating the earth's surface, the atmospheric planetary boundary layer over land is inherently marked by a diurnal cycle. The afternoon transition, the period of the day that connects the daytime dry convective boundary layer to the night-time stable boundary layer, still has a number of unanswered scientific questions. This phase of the diurnal cycle is challenging from both modelling and observational perspectives: it is transitory, most of the forcings are small or null and the turbulence regime changes from fully convective, close to homogeneous and isotropic, toward a more heterogeneous and intermittent state. These issues motivated the BLLAST (Boundary-Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence) field campaign that was conducted from 14 June to 8 July 2011 in southern France, in an area of complex and heterogeneous terrain. A wide range of instrumented platforms including full-size aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft systems, remote-sensing instruments, radiosoundings, tethered balloons, surface flux stations and various meteorological towers were deployed over different surface types. The boundary layer, from the earth's surface to the free troposphere, was probed during the entire day, with a focus and intense observation periods that were conducted from midday until sunset. The BLLAST field campaign also provided an opportunity to test innovative measurement systems, such as new miniaturized sensors, and a new technique for frequent radiosoundings of the low troposphere. Twelve fair weather days displaying various meteorological conditions were extensively documented during the field experiment. The boundary-layer growth varied from one day to another depending on many contributions including stability, advection, subsidence, the state of the previous day's residual layer, as well as local, meso- or synoptic scale conditions. Ground-based measurements combined with tethered-balloon and airborne observations captured the turbulence decay from the surface throughout the whole boundary layer and documented the evolution of the turbulence characteristic length scales during the transition period. Closely integrated with the field experiment, numerical studies are now underway with a complete hierarchy of models to support the data interpretation and improve the model representations.

Description: We simulated meteorology and atmospheric CO2 transport over the Netherlands with the mesoscale model RAMS-Leaf3 coupled to the biospheric CO2 flux model 5PM. The results were compared with meteorological and CO2 observations, with particular attention to the tall tower of Cabauw. An analysis of the coupled exchange of energy, moisture and CO2 showed that the surface fluxes in the domain strongly influenced the atmospheric properties. The majority of the variability in the afternoon CO2 mixing ratio in the middle of the domain was determined by biospheric and fossil fuel CO2 fluxes in the limited area domain (640×640 km). Variation of the surface CO2 fluxes, reflecting the uncertainty of the parameters in the CO2 flux model 5PM, resulted in a range of simulated atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios of about 12 ppm in the well-mixed boundary layer. Additionally, we identified an uncertainty in the surface energy fluxes. The spread caused by this uncertainty in the simulated atmospheric vertical mixing caused a CO2 transport error of 1.7 ppm. This is an important source of uncertainty and should be accounted for to avoid biased estimates of the CO2 mixing ratio, but does not overwhelm the signal in the CO2 mixing ratio due to the spread in CO2 surface fluxes.

Description: Due to the major role of the sun in heating the earth's surface, the atmospheric planetary boundary layer over land is inherently marked by a diurnal cycle. The afternoon transition, the period of the day that connects the daytime dry convective to the night-time stable boundary layer, still raises several scientific issues. This phase of the diurnal cycle is challenging from both modeling and observational perspectives: it is transitory, most of the forcings are small or null and the turbulence regime changes from fully convective regime, close to homogeneous and isotropic, toward a more heterogeneous and intermittent state. These issues motivated the BLLAST (Boundary Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence) field campaign that was conducted from 14 June to 8 July 2011 in southern France, in an area of complex and heterogeneous terrain. A wide range of integrated instrument platforms including full-size aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), remote sensing instruments, radiosoundings, tethered balloons, surface flux stations, and various meteorological towers were deployed over different surface types. The boundary layer, from the earth's surface to the free troposphere, was probed during the entire day, with a focus and intense observations from midday until sunset. The BLLAST field campaign also provided an opportunity to test innovative measurement systems, like new miniaturized sensors, and a new technique for frequent radiosoundings of the low troposphere. Twelve fair weather days displaying various meteorological conditions were extensively documented during the field experiment. The boundary layer growth varied from one day to another depending on many contributions including stability, advection, subsidence, the state of the residual layer of the previous day, as well as local, meso- or synoptic scale conditions. Ground-based measurements combined with tethered-balloon and airborne observations captured the turbulence decay from the surface throughout the whole boundary layer and evidenced the evolution of the turbulence characteristic lengthscales during the transition period. Closely integrated with the field experiment, numerical studies are now underway with a complete hierarchy of models to support the data interpretation and improve the model representations.

Description: The interactions among several stable-boundary-layer (SBL) processes occurring just after the evening transition of 2 July 2011 have been analysed using data from instruments deployed over the area of Lannemezan (France) during the Boundary Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence (BLLAST) field campaign. The near-calm situation of the afternoon was followed by the formation of local shallow drainage flows (SDFs) of less than ten meters depth at different locations. The SDF stage ended with the arrival of a deeper wind more associated with the mountain-plain circulation, which caused mixing and destruction of the SDFs. Several gravity wave-related oscillations were also observed on different time series. Wavelet analyses and wave parameters were calculated from high resolution and accurate surface pressure data of an array of microbarometers. These waves propagated relatively long distances within the SBL, which was confined from the surface to 100 m a.g.l. The effects of these phenomena on the surface fluxes have been studied through Multi Resolution Flux Decomposition methods performed on high frequency data from sonic anemometers deployed at different heights and locations. With this method, we were able to detect the different time-scales involved in surface flux generation and separate them from wave contributions, which becomes very important when choosing averaging-windows for surface flux computations using Eddy Covariance methods. The extensive instrumentation allowed us to highlight in detail the peculiarities of the surface fluxes in the SBL, where several of the noted processes were interacting and producing important variations in the fluxes with height and among sites along the sloping terrain.

Description: We simulated meteorology and atmospheric CO2 transport over the Netherlands with the mesoscale model RAMS-Leaf3 coupled to the biospheric CO2 flux model 5PM. The results were compared with meteorological and CO2 observations, with emphasis on the tall tower of Cabauw. An analysis of the coupled exchange of energy, moisture and CO2 showed that the surface fluxes in the domain strongly influenced the atmospheric properties. The majority of the variability in the afternoon CO2 mixing ratio in the middle of the domain was determined by biospheric and fossil fuel CO2 fluxes in the limited area domain (640×640 km). Variation of the surface CO2 fluxes, reflecting the uncertainty of the parameters in the CO2 flux model 5PM, resulted in a range of simulated atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios of on average 11.7 ppm in the well-mixed boundary layer. Additionally, we found that observed surface energy fluxes and observed atmospheric temperature and moisture could not be reconciled with the simulations. Including this as an uncertainty in the simulation of surface energy fluxes changed simulated atmospheric vertical mixing and horizontal advection, leading to differences in simulated CO2 of on average 1.7 ppm. This is an important source of uncertainty and should be accounted for to avoid biased calculations of the CO2 mixing ratio, but it does not overwhelm the signal in the CO2 mixing ratio due to the uncertainty range of the surface CO2 fluxes.

Description: The interactions among several stable-boundary-layer (SBL) processes occurring just after the evening transition of 2 July 2011 have been analysed using data from instruments deployed over the area of Lannemezan (France) during the Boundary Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence (BLLAST) field campaign. The near-calm situation of the afternoon was followed by the formation of local shallow drainage flows (SDFs) of less than 10 m depth at different locations. The SDF stage ended with the arrival of a stronger wind over a deeper layer more associated with the mountain-plain circulation, which caused mixing and destruction of the SDFs. Several gravity-wave-related oscillations were also observed on different time series. Wavelet analyses and wave parameters were calculated from high resolution and accurate surface pressure data of an array of microbarometers. These waves propagated relatively long distances within the SBL. The effects of these phenomena on turbulent parameters (friction velocity and kinematic heat flux) have been studied through multi-resolution flux decomposition methods performed on high frequency data from sonic anemometers deployed at different heights and locations. With this method, we were able to detect the different time-scales involved in each turbulent parameter and separate them from wave contributions, which becomes very important when choosing averaging-windows for surface flux computations using eddy covariance methods. The extensive instrumentation allowed us to highlight in detail the peculiarities of the surface turbulent parameters in the SBL, where several of the noted processes were interacting and producing important variations in turbulence with height and between sites along the sloping terrain.

Description: Lake effect snow is a shallow convection phenomenon during cold air advection over a relatively warm lake. A severe case of lake effect snow over Lake Erie on 24 December 2001 was studied with the MM5 and WRF mesoscale models. This particular case provided over 200 cm of snow in Buffalo (NY), caused three casualties and $10 million of material damage. Hence, the need for a reliable forecast of the lake effect snow phenomenon is evident. MM5 and WRF simulate lake effect snow successfully, although the intensity of the snowbelt is underestimated. It appears that significant differences occur between using a simple and a complex microphysics scheme. In MM5, the use of the simple-ice microphysics scheme results in the triggering of the convection much earlier in time than with the more sophisticated Reisner-Graupel-scheme. Furthermore, we find a large difference in the maximum precipitation between the different nested domains: Reisner-Graupel produces larger differences in precipitation between the domains than "simple ice". In WRF, the sophisticated Thompson microphysics scheme simulates less precipitation than the simple WSM3 scheme. Increased temperature of Lake Erie results in an exponential growth in the 24-h precipitation. Regarding the convection scheme, the updated Kain-Fritsch scheme (especially designed for shallow convection during lake effect snow), gives only slight differences in precipitation between the updated and the original scheme.