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Extensive expansion in irrigated agriculture has taken place over the last half century. Due to increased irrigation and resultant land-use–land-cover change, the central United States has seen a decrease in temperature and changes in precipitation during the second half of the twentieth century. To investigate the impacts of widespread commencement of irrigation at the beginning of the growing season and continued irrigation throughout the summer on local and regional weather, the Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX) was conducted in the spring and summer of 2018 in southeastern Nebraska. GRAINEX consisted of two 15-day intensive observation periods. Observational platforms from multiple agencies and universities were deployed to investigate the role of irrigation in surface moisture content, heat fluxes, diurnal boundary layer evolution, and local precipitation. This article provides an overview of the data collected and an analysis of the role of irrigation in land–atmosphere interactions on time scales from the seasonal to the diurnal. The analysis shows that a clear irrigation signal was apparent during the peak growing season in mid-July. This paper shows the strong impact of irrigation on surface fluxes, near-surface temperature and humidity, and boundary layer growth and decay.

Wind energy has been growing steadily in the U.S. and worldwide in the past decades. As wind farms are projected to increase in size and number, however, concerns are rising about possible undesira...

The eXperimental Planetary boundary layer Instrumentation Assessment (XPIA) field campaign took place in March through May 2015 at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory, utilizing its 300 m meteorological tower, instrumented with two sonic anemometers mounted on opposite sides of the tower at six heights. This allowed for at least one sonic anemometer at each level to be upstream of the tower at all times and for identification of the times when a sonic anemometer is in the wake of the tower frame. Other instrumentation, including profiling and scanning lidars aided in the identification of the tower wake. Here we compare pairs of sonic anemometers at the same heights to identify the range of directions that are affected by the tower for each of the opposing booms. The mean velocity and turbulent kinetic energy are used to quantify the wake impact on these first- and second-order wind measurements, showing up to a 50 % reduction in wind speed and an order of magnitude increase in turbulent kinetic energy. Comparisons of wind speeds from profiling and scanning lidars confirmed the extent of the tower wake, with the same reduction in wind speed observed in the tower wake, and a speed-up effect around the wake boundaries. Wind direction differences between pairs of sonic anemometers and between sonic anemometers and lidars can also be significant, as the flow is deflected by the tower structure. Comparisons of lengths of averaging intervals showed a decrease in wind speed deficit with longer averages, but the flow deflection remains constant over longer averages. Furthermore, asymmetry exists in the tower effects due to the geometry and placement of the booms on the triangular tower. An analysis of the percentage of observations in the wake that must be removed from 2 min mean wind speed and 20 min turbulent values showed that removing even small portions of the time interval due to wakes impacts these two quantities. However, a vast majority of intervals have no observations in the tower wake, so removing the full 2 or 20 min intervals does not diminish the XPIA dataset.

Near-surface soil hydro-thermodynamics plays an important role in heat and water transfer between land and atmosphere. However, it is difficult to quantify these processes in field campaigns, such as movement of liquid water and water vapor. This has affected determination of ground heat flux, a key component of surface energy budget. This study aims to quantify soil heat and water processes utilizing in situ measurements, and to improve ground heat flux estimation and surface energy imbalance. A new model has been proposed based on three main physical processes, including thermal conduction, convection of heat by moving water, and convection of latent heat. The model was tested at a grassland site in Colorado, USA. Results show that the model can capture high values of soil water content during rain events, low values under intense solar radiation, and high-frequency fluctuations under intermittent cloudy conditions. Also, the model produces reasonable vertical velocity and mass flux of water vapor. For the estimation of ground heat flux, the method that considers vertical variation of soil thermal conductivity and the contribution of water vapor gives better energy balance ratio than methods that ignore these conditions. In spite of this, the energy balance ratio is still low. Footprint analysis further shows the seasonal variation of ground cover is a potential reason responsible for this.

The second Meteor Crater Experiment (METCRAX II) was conducted in October 2013 at Arizona’s Meteor Crater. The experiment was designed to investigate nighttime downslope windstorm−type flows that form regularly above the inner southwest sidewall of the 1.2-km diameter crater as a southwesterly mesoscale katabatic flow cascades over the crater rim. The objective of METCRAX II is to determine the causes of these strong, intermittent, and turbulent inflows that bring warm-air intrusions into the southwest part of the crater. This article provides an overview of the scientific goals of the experiment; summarizes the measurements, the crater topography, and the synoptic meteorology of the study period; and presents initial analysis results.

Drainage of cold air down a small valley and associated near-surface wind maxima are examined from 20 stations with sonic anemometers at 1 m and from a 20-m tower that includes six sonic anemometers in the lowest 5 m, deployed in the Shallow Cold Pool Experiment (SCP). The small valley is about 270 m wide and 12 m deep with a downvalley slope of 2%–3%. The momentum budget indicates that the flow is driven by the buoyancy deficit of the flow and opposed primarily by the stress divergence while the remaining terms are estimated to be at least an order of magnitude smaller. This analysis also reveals major difficulties in quantifying such a budget due to uncertainties in the measurements, sensitivity to choice of averaging time, and sensitivity to measurement heights.Wind maxima occur as low as 0.5 m in the downvalley drainage flow—the lowest observational level. The downvalley cold air drainage and wind maxima are frequently disrupted by transient modes that sometimes lead to significant vertical mixing. On average, the downvalley drainage of cold air occurs with particularly weak turbulence with stronger turbulence above the drainage flow. The momentum flux profile responds to the shear reversal at the wind maximum on a vertical scale of 1 m or less, suggesting the important role of finescale turbulent diffusion.

A system to make atmospheric measurements from a moving trolley suspended by a stretched cable has been developed. At present, these measurements consist of wind velocity, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration, though other sensors may be added. The track consists of cable segments attached to turns mounted on standard triangular towers. Using this approach, the path can be a closed (three dimensional) polygon of arbitrary length. This tool allows continuous, high spatial and temporal resolution sampling in environments, such as within forest canopies, not possible with other platforms. This system was used at the Niwot Ridge AmeriFlux site to obtain insight into the spatial and temporal structure of CO2, wind, and humidity fields in a natural forest ecosystem. Specifically, cool, moist, and CO2-rich air was observed to move in thin blobs downslope along the local water drainage through the subcanopy space at night.

Field and numerical studies of the evolution of the atmosphere in the near-ideal, basin-shaped crater have led to an extensive dataset exhibiting many stable boundary layer phenomena and their interactions with background flows.

The partial solar eclipse on 11 July 1991 in central California, with 58.3% maximum coverage, provided an exceptional opportunity to study the temporal response of processes in the atmospheric boundary layer to an abrupt change in solar radiation. Almost laboratory-like conditions were met over a cotton field, since no clouds disturbed the course of the eclipse. Tower-based and complementing aircraft-based systems monitored the micrometeorological conditions over the site. Temperature profile measurements indicated neutral stratification during the maximum eclipse in contrast to the unstable conditions before and after the eclipse. Accordingly, the sensible heat exchange completely stopped, as a wavelet analysis of the tower measurements and airborne eddy-covariance measurements showed. Turbulent fluxes of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone were reduced by approximately ⅔ at the peak of the eclipse. Wavelet analysis further indicated that the same eddies contributed to the turbulent transport of water vapor and carbon dioxide, whereas sensible heat was transported by different ones. An analysis of the decay of turbulent kinetic energy followed a power law of time with an exponent of −1.25. The response of the sensible heat flux was 8–13 min delayed relative to the solar forcing, whereas no significant time lag could be detected for the turbulent fluxes of air constituents.

This paper describes important characteristics of an uncoupled high-resolution land data assimilation system (HRLDAS) and presents a systematic evaluation of 18-month-long HRLDAS numerical experiments, conducted in two nested domains (with 12- and 4-km grid spacing) for the period from 1 January 2001 to 30 June 2002, in the context of the International H2O Project (IHOP_2002). HRLDAS was developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to initialize land-state variables of the coupled Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)–land surface model (LSM) for high-resolution applications. Both uncoupled HRDLAS and coupled WRF are executed on the same grid, sharing the same LSM, land use, soil texture, terrain height, time-varying vegetation fields, and LSM parameters to ensure the same soil moisture climatological description between the two modeling systems so that HRLDAS soil state variables can be used to initialize WRF–LSM without conversion and interpolation. If HRLDAS is initialized with soil conditions previously spun up from other models, it requires roughly 8–10 months for HRLDAS to reach quasi equilibrium and is highly dependent on soil texture. However, the HRLDAS surface heat fluxes can reach quasi-equilibrium state within 3 months for most soil texture categories. Atmospheric forcing conditions used to drive HRLDAS were evaluated against Oklahoma Mesonet data, and the response of HRLDAS to typical errors in each atmospheric forcing variable was examined. HRLDAS-simulated finescale (4 km) soil moisture, temperature, and surface heat fluxes agreed well with the Oklahoma Mesonet and IHOP_2002 field data. One case study shows high correlation between HRLDAS evaporation and the low-level water vapor field derived from radar analysis.

An overview of the Energy Balance Experiment (EBEX-2000) is given. This experiment studied the ability of state-of-the-art measurements to close the surface energy balance over a surface (a vegetative canopy with large evapotranspiration) where closure has been difficult to obtain. A flood-irrigated cotton field over uniform terrain was used, though aerial imagery and direct flux measurements showed that the surface still was inhomogeneous. All major terms of the surface energy balance were measured at nine sites to characterize the spatial variability across the field. Included in these observations was an estimate of heat storage in the plant canopy. The resultant imbalance still was 10%, which exceeds the estimated measurement error. We speculate that horizontal advection in the layer between the canopy top and our flux measurement height may cause this imbalance, though our estimates of this term using our measurements resulted in values less than what would be required to balance the budget.

The eddy-covariance method is the primary way of measuring turbulent fluxes directly. Many investigators have found that these flux measurements often do not satisfy a fundamental criterion—closure of the surface energy balance. This study investigates to what extent the eddy-covariance measurement technology can be made responsible for this deficiency, in particular the effects of instrumentation or of the post-field data processing. Therefore, current eddy-covariance sensors and several post-field data processing methods were compared. The differences in methodology resulted in deviations of 10% for the sensible heat flux and of 15% for the latent heat flux for an averaging time of 30 min. These disparities were mostly due to different sensor separation corrections and a linear detrending of the data. The impact of different instrumentation on the resulting heat flux estimates was significantly higher. Large deviations from the reference system of up to 50% were found for some sensor combinations. However, very good measurement quality was found for a CSAT3 sonic together with a KH20 krypton hygrometer and also for a UW sonic together with a KH20. If these systems are well calibrated and maintained, an accuracy of better than 5% can be achieved for 30-min values of sensible and latent heat flux measurements. The results from the sonic anemometers Gill Solent-HS, ATI-K, Metek USA-1, and R.M. Young 81000 showed more or less larger deviations from the reference system. The LI-COR LI-7500 open-path H2O/CO2 gas analyser in the test was one of the first serial numbers of this sensor type and had technical problems regarding direct solar radiation sensitivity and signal delay. These problems are known by the manufacturer and improvements of the sensor have since been made.

Sonic anemometer path-averaging errors are determined for measurements of inertial-range velocity and temperature power spectra as a function of k1p, where k1 is the streamwise wave number and p is the sonic path length. The attenuation of vertical velocity spectra is found to be quite similar for the CSAT3 and Solent anemometers and to be insensitive to wind direction. The attenuation of the horizontal wind component spectra is noticeably greater for the Solent sonics than for the CSAT3, but those for the CSAT3 have a greater dependence on wind direction. The attenuation of sonic temperature spectra is also found to be quite similar for the CSAT3 and Solent R3 sonics and to be insensitive to wind direction, while that of the Solent R2 is less than that of the other two sonics and has a minor dependence on wind direction.

The Investigation of Sulfur Chemistry in the Antarctic Troposphere (ISCAT) took place over the timer period of 15 November to 31 December in the year 2000. The study location was the Amundsen Scott Station in Antarctica. ISCAT 2000 defines the second phase of a program designed to explore tropospheric chemistry in Antarctica. As in 1998, the 2000 ISCAT study revealed a strong oxidizing environment at South Pole (SP). During the 2000 investigation, however, the suite of measurements was greatly expanded. These new measurements established the recycling of reactive nitrogen as a critical component of this unique environment. This paper first presents the historical background leading up to the ISCAT 2000 observations; then it focuses on providing a summary of the year 2000 results and contrasts these with those recorded during 1998. Important developments made during the 2000 study included the recording of SP data for several species being emitted from the snowpack. These included NO, H2O2 and CH2O. In this context, eddy-diffusion flux measurements provided the first quantitative estimates of the SP NO and NOx snow-to-atmosphere fluxes. This study also revealed that HNO3 and HO2NO2 were major sink species for HOx and NOx radicals. And, it identified the critical factors responsible for SP NO levels exceeding those at other polar sites by nearly an order of magnitude. Finally, it reports on the levels of gas phase sulfur species and provides evidence indicating that the absence of DMS at SP is most likely due to its greatly shorten chemical lifetime in the near vicinity of the plateau. It is proposed that this is due to the influence of NO on the distribution of OH in the lower free troposphere over a region that extends well beyond the plateau itself. Details related to each of the above findings plus others can be found in the 11 accompanying Special Issue papers.

Eddy-covariance heat flux as well as temperature and NO concentration gradients were measured during the ISCAT 2000 (Investigation of Sulfur Chemistry in the Antarctic Troposphere) field study at the South Pole (SP). These quantities allowed for the use of the modified Bowen ratio technique to estimate the surface flux of NO and, from photochemical considerations, the NO x flux. The meteorological measurement package employed in these experiments consisted of sonic anemometer/thermometers (ATI K-probes) and temperature/humidity sensors (NCAR). A chemiluminescent analyzer housed in an environmental enclosure was used to measure NO. All sampling took place on a 22 m meteorological tower. The time period over which flux measurements were recorded was 26 November through 30 November 2000. The average value of the NO flux was estimated to be 2.6 ± 0.3 × 10 8 molec cm - 2 s - 1 ; whereas, for NO x the average flux was 3.9 ± 0.4 × 10 8 molec cm - 2 s - 1 . To assist in the interpretation of these results, the height of the atmospheric boundary-layer at the SP from 23 November to 28 December 2000 was also estimated.

Experimental equipment : A supplement to The Summertime Arctic Atmosphere: Meteorological measurements during the ArcticOcean Experiment 2001 (AOE-2001)

A unique set of nocturnal longwave radiative and sensible heat flux divergences was obtained during the 1999 Cooperative Atmosphere–Surface Exchange Study (CASES-99). These divergences are based on upward and downward longwave radiation measurements at two levels and turbulent eddy correlation measurements at eight levels. In contrast to previous radiation divergence measurements obtained within 10 m above the ground, radiative flux divergence was measured within a deeper layer—between 2 and 48 m. Within the layer, the radiative flux divergence is, on average, comparable to or smaller than the sensible heat flux divergence. The horizontal and vertical temperature advection, derived as the residual in the heat balance using observed sensible heat and radiative fluxes, are found to be significant terms in the heat balance at night. The observations also indicate that the radiative flux divergence between 2 and 48 m was typically largest in the early evening. Its magnitude depends on how fast the gr...

Techniques for improving the relative accuracy of longwave radiation measurements by a set of pyrgeometers [the Eppley Laboratory Precision Infrared Radiometer (Model PIR)] are presented using 10 PIRs from the 1999 Cooperative Atmosphere–Surface Exchange Study (CASES-99). The least squares–based optimization technique uses a field intercomparison (i.e., a time period during which all the PIRs were upward looking and set up side by side) to determine a set of optimization coefficients for each PIR. For the 10 CASES-99 PIRs, the optimization technique improved the standard deviation of the difference of downwelling irradiance between the PIRs from ±0.75 to ±0.4 W m−2 (for nighttime data). In addition to presenting the optimization method, various PIR data quality checks are outlined and applied to the PIR data. Based on these quality checks, the measured case and dome temperatures of the CASES-99 PIRs were all reasonable. Using the 10 CASES-99 PIRs, simple estimates of the average nighttime net rad...

A multiscale dataset that includes atmospheric, surface, and subsurface observations obtained from an observation network covering a region that has a scale order comparable to mesoscale and general circulation models is described and analyzed. The dataset is half-hourly time series of forcing and flux response data developed from the one-month Cooperative Atmosphere–Surface Exchange Study (CASES-97) experiment, located in the Walnut Watershed near Wichita, Kansas. The horizontal complexity of this dataset was analyzed by looking at the sensible and latent heat flux response of station data from the three main land surface types of winter wheat, grass/pastureland, and bare soil/sparse vegetation. The variability in the heat flux response at and among the different sites points to the need for a spatially distributed, time-varying atmospheric-forcing dataset for use in land surface modeling experiments. Such a dataset at horizontal spacings of 1, 5, and 10 km was developed from the station data an...

The sensitivity of sonic anemometer-derived stress estimates to the tilt of the anemometer is investigated. The largest stress errors are shown to occur for unstable stratification (z/L

This paper reports the first power spectra of ozone (O3) in the surface layer for which the data quality approaches that of high-quality spectra of meteorological properties. These results are employed in a surface layer scalar similarity study involving temperature, moisture, and O3 measurements over cotton. All data were obtained during the California Ozone Deposition Experiment, in the San Joaquin Valley of California, during July and August, 1991. A detailed comparison of nondimensional scalar power spectra during unstable conditions showed that the three scalars behaved similarly, thereby providing the first completely general test of scalar similarity theory.

A major role of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Electra aircraft during the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) was to measure fluxes of momentum, sensible and latent heat, carbon dioxide, and ozone on a transect that crossed the entire boreal forest biome. The observations spanned the growing season (late May to mid-September 1994) and extended the fluxes obtained in two intensive study areas to larger spatial scales to help provide a data set that is useful for comparison with and validation of large-scale models and satellite retrievals. We found the deciduous forests to be more photosynthetically active than nearby coniferous forests. Coniferous forest fluxes across the transect from the BOREAS southern to northern study areas show no apparent spatial trend, though smaller-scale variability is large. The fluxes make a smooth transition from the BOREAS northern study area to the subarctic tundra. Typical midsummer, midday, large-scale net ecosystem exchanges of carbon dioxide were about -10 μmol m -2 s -1 for primarily deciduous forests, about -6 μmol m -2 s -1 for the primarily coniferous regions between and including the two BOREAS study areas, and about -2 μmol m -2 s -1 for the subarctic tundra. The first two values are similar to those observed by flux towers in the region. Throughout the boreal forest the fluxes are influenced by the presence of lakes. Lake fraction is found to be a dominant source of variability in the fluxes observed along the transect. Lakes are also found to be large sinks of available radiant energy. Regional ground storage of heat is estimated to be about 30% of the net radiation over the forest, and 40% over the subarctic tundra, largely due to the presence of lakes.

The water vapor differential absorption lidar (DIAL) of the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) was flown aboard the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Electra research aircraft during the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS). The downward looking lidar system measured two-dimensional fields of aerosol backscatter and water vapor mixing ratio in the convective boundary layer (CBL) and across the CBL top (zt). We show a case study of DIAL observations of vertical profiles of mean water vapor, water vapor variance, skewness, and integral scale in the CBL. In the entrainment zone (EZ) and down to about 0.3 zi the DIAL observations agree with in situ observations and mixed-layer similarity theory. Below, the water vapor optical depth becomes large and the DIAL signal-to-noise ratio degrades. Knowing the water vapor surface flux and the convective velocity scale w* from in situ aircraft measurements, we derive entrainment fluxes by applying the mixed-layer gradient (MLG) and mixed-layer variance (MLV) methods to DIAL mixing ratio gradient and variance profiles. Entrainment flux estimates are sensitive to our estimate of zt. They are shown to be rather insensitive to the input surface flux and to the DIAL data spatial resolution within the investigated range. The estimates break down above about 0.9 zt as the flux-gradient and flux-variance relationships were developed to describe the large-scale mixing in the mid-CBL. The agreement with in situ entrainment flux estimations is within 30% for the MLV method. On a flight leg with significant mesoscale variability the entrainment flux turns out to be 70% higher than the in situ value. This is in good agreement with the fact that large-eddy simulations (LES) of mean water vapor profiles and variances, upon which the MLG and MLV methods are based, do not include mesoscale variability. The additional water vapor variance from mesoscales may then lead to the overestimate of the flux. Deviations from the in situ observations may also be due to poor LES resolution of small-scale mixing in the EZ, similarly coarse resolution of the DIAL data, or a capping inversion in the LES model (8 K) which is significantly stronger than the observed inversion (3–4 K).

We present a description of the evolution of the convective boundary layer (CBL) over the boreal forests of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as observed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Electra research aircraft during the 1994 Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS). All observations were made between 1530 and 2230 UT (0930–1630 local solar time (LST)). We show that the CBL flux divergence often led to drying of the CBL over the course of the day, with the greatest drying (approaching 0.5 g kg−1 h−1) observed in the morning, 1000–1200 LST, and decreasing over time to nearly no drying (0–0.1 g kg−1 h−1) by midafternoon (1500–1600 LST). The maximum warming (0.45 K h−1 ) also occurred in the morning and decreased slightly to about 0.4 Kh−1 by midafternoon. The CBL vapor pressure deficit (VPD) increased over the course of the day. A significant portion of this increase can be explained by the vertical flux divergence, though horizontal advection also appears to be important. We suggest a linkage among boundary layer growth, the vertical flux divergences, and boundary layer cloud formation, with cloud activity peaking at midday in response to rapid CBL growth, then decreasing somewhat later in the day in response to CBL warming and decreased growth. We also see evidence of feedback between increasing VPD and stomatal control. We use eddy-covariance flux measurements from the Electra to compute the virtual temperature entrainment ratio Ar. The computed mean value of 0.08±0.12 is somewhat lower than the commonly assumed value of 0.2, as well as with other estimates from BOREAS. This value is very sensitive to the determination of CBL depth. We find that Ar increases with an increasing jump in mean wind across the CBL top. The entrainment flux of water vapor is found to be most dependent on time of day (negative correlation). The ratio of entrainment to surface flux of water vapor is 1.57±0.25. Airborne lidar observations of the CBL top reveal a CBL top “thickness” that is smaller than would be expected from simple theory but consistent with past lidar observations. The normalized thickness is found to have a very consistent value h¯/h0-1/0.116±0.008, where 12 cases were examined. A new method of computing the variability of the CBL top is illustrated, and we show that this variance in the CBL depth also scales with the depth but that the value of this normalized variance differs substantially from the “thickness” defined in past literature.

The intermittency exponent μ is determined from comprehensive measurements in the mixing layer (Rλ ≈ 2.0 × 103) and in the return channel (Rλ ≈ 3.2 × 103) of a large wind tunnel as well as in an atmospheric surface layer at Rλ ≈ (3.3–12.7) × 103. To estimate the value of μ and its dependence on Rλ and the flow conditions, different methods of data processing are applied to the same data base, i.e., μ is defined by its scaling behaviour in the inertial range of centered and non-centered correlation functions and spectra of energy dissipation, second order moments of r and lnr, etc. (Here Rλ is the Taylor microscale based Reynolds number, and r is the energy dissipation averaged over a segment of length r.) It is found that these methods do not define a unique value of μ but a set of different scaling exponents, and these exponents stay systematically different over the range of flow conditions which was studied. No tendency for these exponents to collapse is observed up to Rλ = 12.7 × 103.

To improve the quality of scalar-flux measurements, the two-point covariance between the vertical velocity w and a scalar s, separated in space both horizontally and vertically, is studied. The measurements of such two-point covariances between vertical velocity and temperature with horizontal and vertical separations show good agreement with a symmetric turbulence model when the displacement is horizontal. However, a similar model does not work for vertical displacements because up–down asymmetry exists; that is, there is a lack of reflection symmetry of the covariance function. The second-order equation for conservation of two-point covariance of w and s reveals the reason for this up–down asymmetry and determines its character. On the basis of our measurements, the “loss of flux” for a given lateral displacement decreases with increasing height of the sensors. For example, at a height of z = 10 m with a sensor displacement of D = 0.2 m, less than 1% of the flux is lost, whereas at z = 1 m ...

In this paper we apply a spaced antenna technique derived from the recent work of Doviak et al. [1996a] and Holloway et al. [this issue] to wind measurement with a small UHF boundary layer profiler. We discuss the implementation of the technique, averaging and quality control strategies, and some advantages and limitations of spaced antenna methods over conventional Doppler beam swinging wind profilers in the boundary layer. Such advantages include a relaxation of the assumption of a horizontally uniform wind field and the possibility of high temporal resolution wind profiles. In this regard we present velocity measurements derived from this UHF system with time resolution of about 30 s and compare these measurements with in situ sonic anemometer data taken on a 300-m tower. Finally, we present an example of a high-resolution time-height cross section of atmospheric winds. This example, collected in stratiform precipitation, shows the intriguing situation of a wind speed maximum (jet) which closely follows the height of the melting layer over several hours even as this height changes by several hundred meters.

The exchange of various trace species and energy at the earth's surface plays an important role in climate, ecology, and human health and welfare. Surface exchange measurements can be difficult to obtain yet are important to understand physical processes, assess environmental and global change impacts, and develop robust parameterizations of atmospheric processes. The physics and turbulent structure of the atmospheric boundary layer are reviewed as they contribute to dry surface exchange rates (fluxes). Micrometeorological, budget, and enclosure techniques used to measure or estimate surface fluxes are described, along with their respective advantages and limitations. Various measurement issues (such as site characteristics, sampling considerations, sensor attributes, and flow distortion) impact on the ability to obtain representative surface-based and airborne flux data.

Characteristics of turbulence in the inertial range are experimentally studied in the atmospheric surface layer over the range of the Taylor microscale based Reynolds number Rλ≊(2.8–12.7)×103 and in a large wind tunnel (in a mixing layer at Rλ≊2.0×103 and a return channel at Rλ≊3.2×103). The intermittency exponent μ, estimated from the correlation function of energy dissipation Ree(r)=〈e(x)e(x+r)〉∝r−μ, is found to be independent of Reynolds number and approximately equal to 0.20. No ‘‘measurable’’ deviation from the −5/3 exponent in the ‘‘five‐thirds’’ law is found. On the other hand, the Kolmogorov constant C in this law is found to be weakly dependent on Rλ. This dependence is well described by the power law C∝R−μ/2λ≊R−0.10λ at μ≊0.20.