Duscha, C, Barrell, C, Renfrew, IA et al. (3 more authors) (2022) A Ship-Based Characterization of Coherent Boundary-Layer Structures Over the Lifecycle of a Marine Cold-Air Outbreak. Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 183 (3). pp. 355-380. ISSN 0006-8314
Abstract
Convective coherent structures shape the atmospheric boundary layer over the lifecycle of marine cold-air outbreaks (CAOs). Aircraft measurements have been used to characterize such structures in past CAOs. Yet, aircraft case studies are limited to snapshots of a few hours and do not capture how coherent structures, and the associated boundary-layer characteristics, change over the CAO time scale, which can be on the order of several days. We present a novel ship-based approach to determine the evolution of the coherent-structure characteristics, based on profiling lidar observations. Over the lifecycle of a multi-day CAO we show how these structures interact with boundary-layer characteristics, simultaneously obtained by a multi-sensor set-up. Observations are taken during the Iceland Greenland Seas Project’s wintertime cruise in February and March 2018. For the evaluated CAO event, we successfully identify cellular coherent structures of varying size in the order of 4 × 102 m to 104 m and velocity amplitudes of up to 0.5 m s−1 in the vertical and 1 m s−1 in the horizontal. The structures’ characteristics are sensitive to the near-surface stability and the Richardson number. We observe the largest coherent structures most frequently for conditions when turbulence generation is weakly buoyancy dominated. Structures of increasing size contribute efficiently to the overturning of the boundary layer and are linked to the growth of the convective boundary-layer depth. The new approach provides robust statistics for organized convection, which would be easy to extend by additional observations during convective events from vessels of opportunity operating in relevant areas.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Cold-air outbreak; Convective coherent structures; Iceland–Greenland sea; Lidar wind profiling |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Mar 2022 15:43 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:56 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10546-022-00692-y |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:185125 |
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