scholarly journals Airborne lidar measurements of aerosol and ozone above the Canadian oil sands region

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 3829-3849 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Aggarwal ◽  
James Whiteway ◽  
Jeffrey Seabrook ◽  
Lawrence Gray ◽  
Kevin Strawbridge ◽  
...  

Abstract. Aircraft-based lidar measurements of atmospheric aerosol and ozone were conducted to study air pollution from the oil sands extraction industry in northern Alberta. Significant amounts of aerosol were observed in the polluted air within the surface boundary layer, up to heights of 1 to 1.6 km above ground. The ozone mixing ratio measured in the polluted boundary layer air directly above the oil sands industry was equal to or less than the background ozone mixing ratio. On one of the flights, the lidar measurements detected a layer of forest fire smoke above the surface boundary layer in which the ozone mixing ratio was substantially greater than the background. Measurements of the linear depolarization ratio in the aerosol backscatter were obtained with a ground-based lidar and this aided in the discrimination between the separate emission sources from industry and forest fires. The retrieval of ozone abundance from the lidar measurements required the development of a method to account for the interference from the substantial aerosol content within the polluted boundary layer.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Aggarwal ◽  
James Whiteway ◽  
Jeffery Seabrook ◽  
Lawrence Gray ◽  
Kevin Strawbridge ◽  
...  

Abstract. Aircraft based lidar measurements of atmospheric aerosol and ozone were conducted to study air pollution from the oil sands extraction industry in northern Alberta. Significant amounts of aerosol were observed in the polluted air within the surface boundary layer, up to heights of 1 km to 1.5 km above ground. The ozone mixing ratio measured in the polluted boundary layer air was equal to or less than the background ozone mixing ratio, in the range of 10 ppbv to 35 ppbv. On one of the flights, the lidar measurements detected a layer of forest fire smoke above the surface boundary layer in which the ozone mixing ratio had a maximum value of 70 ppbv. Measurements of the linear depolarization ratio in the aerosol backscatter were obtained with a ground based lidar and this aided in the discrimination between the separate emission sources from industry and forest fires. The retrieval of ozone abundance from the lidar measurements required the development of a method to account for the interference from the substantial aerosol content within the surface boundary layer.


Author(s):  
Yagya Dutta Dwivedi ◽  
Vasishta Bhargava Nukala ◽  
Satya Prasad Maddula ◽  
Kiran Nair

Abstract Atmospheric turbulence is an unsteady phenomenon found in nature and plays significance role in predicting natural events and life prediction of structures. In this work, turbulence in surface boundary layer has been studied through empirical methods. Computer simulation of Von Karman, Kaimal methods were evaluated for different surface roughness and for low (1%), medium (10%) and high (50%) turbulence intensities. Instantaneous values of one minute time series for longitudinal turbulent wind at mean wind speed of 12 m/s using both spectra showed strong correlation in validation trends. Influence of integral length scales on turbulence kinetic energy production at different heights is illustrated. Time series for mean wind speed of 12 m/s with surface roughness value of 0.05 m have shown that variance for longitudinal, lateral and vertical velocity components were different and found to be anisotropic. Wind speed power spectral density from Davenport and Simiu profiles have also been calculated at surface roughness of 0.05 m and compared with k−1 and k−3 slopes for Kolmogorov k−5/3 law in inertial sub-range and k−7 in viscous dissipation range. At high frequencies, logarithmic slope of Kolmogorov −5/3rd law agreed well with Davenport, Harris, Simiu and Solari spectra than at low frequencies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Belcher ◽  
Alan L. M. Grant ◽  
Kirsty E. Hanley ◽  
Baylor Fox-Kemper ◽  
Luke Van Roekel ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Wagner ◽  
Andre Souza ◽  
Adeline Hillier ◽  
Ali Ramadhan ◽  
Raffaele Ferrari

<p>Parameterizations of turbulent mixing in the ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) are key Earth System Model (ESM) components that modulate the communication of heat and carbon between the atmosphere and ocean interior. OSBL turbulence parameterizations are formulated in terms of unknown free parameters estimated from observational or synthetic data. In this work we describe the development and use of a synthetic dataset called the “LESbrary” generated by a large number of idealized, high-fidelity, limited-area large eddy simulations (LES) of OSBL turbulent mixing. We describe how the LESbrary design leverages a detailed understanding of OSBL conditions derived from observations and large scale models to span the range of realistically diverse physical scenarios. The result is a diverse library of well-characterized “synthetic observations” that can be readily assimilated for the calibration of realistic OSBL parameterizations in isolation from other ESM model components. We apply LESbrary data to calibrate free parameters, develop prior estimates of parameter uncertainty, and evaluate model errors in two OSBL parameterizations for use in predictive ESMs.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 5075-5085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boming Liu ◽  
Yingying Ma ◽  
Jiqiao Liu ◽  
Wei Gong ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract. The atmospheric boundary layer is an important atmospheric feature that affects environmental health and weather forecasting. In this study, we proposed a graphics algorithm for the derivation of atmospheric boundary layer height (BLH) from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data. Owing to the differences in scattering intensity between molecular and aerosol particles, the total attenuated backscatter coefficient 532 and attenuated backscatter coefficient 1064 were used simultaneously for BLH detection. The proposed algorithm transformed the gradient solution into graphics distribution solution to overcome the effects of large noise and improve the horizontal resolution. This method was then tested with real signals under different horizontal smoothing numbers (1, 3, 15 and 30). Finally, the results of BLH obtained by CALIPSO data were compared with the results retrieved by the ground-based lidar measurements. Under the horizontal smoothing number of 15, 12 and 9, the correlation coefficients between the BLH derived by the proposed algorithm and ground-based lidar were both 0.72. Under the horizontal smoothing number of 6, 3 and 1, the correlation coefficients between the BLH derived by graphics distribution method (GDM) algorithm and ground-based lidar were 0.47, 0.14 and 0.12, respectively. When the horizontal smoothing number was large (15, 12 and 9), the CALIPSO BLH derived by the proposed method demonstrated a good correlation with ground-based lidar. The algorithm provided a reliable result when the horizontal smoothing number was greater than 9. This finding indicated that the proposed algorithm can be applied to the CALIPSO satellite data with 3 and 5 km horizontal resolution.


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