The structure of a fair weather boundary layer based on the results of several measurement strategies.

Abstract

A fair weather boundary layer (BL) with light winds and scattered cumulus to 1100 m is examined in the GATE C-scale triangle using data from tethered balloons, surface measurements from the booms of the ships, structure sondes and gust probe aircraft. The original goal was a comparison of the instrumentation in an expected uniform field of wind, temperature and humidity. It became rapidly obvious that nonuniformities existed not only at the turbulence scales (a few meters to 1 km) but also on scales 10 km and larger. Thus, the goal evolved into 1) combining the observations to present a coherent picture of the day, 2) putting the results of various observational techniques in perspective and 3) examining the nonuniformity.- from Authors