Aditya Choukulkar

Assessing State-of-the-Art Capabilities for Probing the Atmospheric Boundary Layer: The XPIA Field Campaign

AbstractTo assess current capabilities for measuring flow within the atmospheric boundary layer, including within wind farms, the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored the eXperimental Planetary boundary layer Instrumentation Assessment (XPIA) campaign at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) in spring 2015. Herein, we summarize the XPIA field experiment, highlight novel measurement approaches, and quantify uncertainties associated with these measurement methods. Line-of-sight velocities measured by scanning lidars and radars exhibit close agreement with tower measurements, despite differences in measurement volumes. Virtual towers of wind measurements, from multiple lidars or radars, also agree well with tower and profiling lidar measurements. Estimates of winds over volumes from scanning lidars and radars are in close agreement, enabling the assessment of spatial variability. Strengths of the radar systems used here include high scan rates, large domain coverage, and availability during most precipita...

A New Research Approach for Observing and Characterizing Land-Atmosphere Feedback

Capsule SummaryA new field campaign using a synergy of scanning lidar systems as well as other in-situ and remote sensing methods provides profiles, gradients, and fluxes of temperature, humidity, and winds from the surface to the top of the planetary boundary layer to evaluate and improve our understanding of land-atmosphere interactions.