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Initial investigations of microscale cellular convection in an equatorial marine atmospheric boundary layer revealed by lidar
Author(s) -
Cooper D. I.,
Eichinger W. E.,
Ecke R. E.,
Kao J. C. Y.,
Reisner J. M.,
Tellier L. L.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/96gl03255
Subject(s) - microscale chemistry , lidar , intermittency , mesoscale meteorology , convection , boundary layer , planetary boundary layer , atmosphere (unit) , atmospheric sciences , atmosphere of earth , environmental science , meteorology , geology , remote sensing , turbulence , climatology , physics , mechanics , mathematics , mathematics education
During the Combined Sensor Program (CSP) in March of 1996, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) fielded an advanced scanning Raman lidar. The lidar was part of a larger suite of micrometeorological sensors to quantify processes associated with the ocean‐atmosphere interface, including intermittency and coherent atmospheric features in the “warm pool” of the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) near Manus Island (2° S. lat, 147° E. long). Initial inspection of the data has revealed excellent information on the microscale vertical and horizontal spatial and temporal structure of the equatorial Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL). The data from this experiment have added to the increasing body of measurements on surface layer convection and intermittency including, for the first time, the observation of microscale cellular convective structures such as hexagonal patterns associated with Rayleigh‐Bénard cells.