Data/model integration for vertical mixing in the stable Arctic boundary layer

This is the final report of a short Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Data on atmospheric trace constituents and the vertical structure of stratus clouds from a 1996 expedition to the central Arctic reveal mechanisms of vertical mixing that have not been observed in mid-latitudes. Time series of the altitude and thickness of summer arctic stratus have been observed using an elastic backscatter lidar aboard an icebreaker. With the ship moored to the pack ice during 14 data collection stations and the lidar staring vertically, the time series represent advected cloud fields. The lidar data reveal a significant amount of vertical undulation in the clouds, strongly suggestive of traveling waves in the buoyantly damped atmosphere that predominates in the high Arctic. Concurrent observations of trace gases associated with the natural sulfur cycle (dimethyl sulfide, SO{sub 2}, NH{sub 3}, H{sub 2}O{sub 2}) and aerosols show evidence of vertical mixing events that coincide with a characteristic signature in the cloud field that may be called dropout or lift out. A segment of a cloud deck appears to be relocated from the otherwise quasicontinuous layer to another altitude a few hundred meters lower or higher. Atmospheric models have been applied to identify the mechanism that cause the dropout phenomenon and connect it dynamically to the surface layer mixing