Identification

Title

Turbulence in breaking mountain waves and atmospheric rotors estimated from airborne in situ and Doppler radar measurements

Abstract

Atmospheric turbulence generated in flow over mountainous terrain is studied using airborne in situ and cloud radar measurements over the Medicine Bow Mountains in southeast Wyoming, USA. During the NASA Orographic Clouds Experiment (NASA06) in 2006, two complex mountain flow cases were documented by the University of Wyoming King Air research aircraft carrying the Wyoming Cloud Radar. The structure of turbulence and its intensity across the mountain range are described using the variance of vertical velocity inline image and the cube root of the energy dissipation rate 1/3 (EDR). For a quantitative analysis of turbulence from the cloud radar, the uncertainties in the Doppler wind retrieval have to be taken into account, such as the variance of hydrometeor fall speed and the contamination of vertical Doppler velocity by the horizontal wind. A thorough analysis of the uncertainties shows that 25% accuracy or better can be achieved in regions of moderate to severe turbulence in the lee of the mountains, while only qualitative estimates of turbulence intensity can be obtained outside the most turbulent regions. Two NASA06 events exhibiting large-amplitude mountain waves, mid-tropospheric wave breaking, and rotor circulations are examined. Moderate turbulence is found in a wave-breaking region with inline image and EDR reaching 4.8 m2 s-2 and 0.25 m2/3 s-1, respectively. Severe turbulence is measured within the rotor circulations with inline image and EDR respectively in the ranges of 7.8-16.4 m2 s-2 and 0.50-0.77 m2/3 s-1. A unique result of this study is the quantitative estimation of the intensity of turbulence and its spatial distribution in the interior of atmospheric rotors, provided by the radar-derived turbulence fields.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7f76f1p

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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Text

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title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-10-01T00:00:00Z

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None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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