The Large eddy Observatory, Voitsumra Experiment 2019 (LOVE19) with high-resolution, spatially distributed observations of air temperature, wind speed, and wind direction from fiber-optic distributed sensing, towers, and ground-based remote sensing

Abstract

The weak-wind stable boundary layer (wwSBL) is poorly described by theory and breaks basic assumptions necessary for observations of turbulence. Understanding the wwSBL requires distributed observations capable of separating between sub-mesoscales and turbulent scales. To this end, we present the Large eddy Observatory, Voitsumra Experiment 2019 (LOVE19) which featured 2105ĝ€¯m of fiber-optic distributed sensing (FODS) of air temperature and wind speed, as well as an experimental wind direction method, at scales as fine as 1ĝ€¯s and 0.127ĝ€¯m in addition to a suite of point observations of turbulence and ground-based remote sensing profiling. Additionally, flights with a fiber-optic cable attached to a tethered balloon (termed FlyFOX, Flying Fiber Optics eXperiment) provide an unprecedentedly detailed view of the boundary layer structure with a resolution of 0.254ĝ€¯m and 10ĝ€¯s between 1 and 200ĝ€¯m height. Two examples are provided, demonstrating the unique capabilities of the LOVE19 data for examining boundary layer processes: (1) FODS observations between 1 and 200ĝ€¯m height during a period of gravity waves propagating across the entire boundary layer and (2) tracking a near-surface, transient, sub-mesoscale structure that causes an intermittent burst of turbulence. All data can be accessed at Zenodo through the DOI 10.5281/zenodo.4312976 .