Abstract
A complex marine experiment was conducted in autumn 1991 on the research vessel Dmitry Mendelev in association with the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (ASTEX). A three-axis Doppler sodar designed at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Moscow, was used in this experiment. Total observation time was about 770 hours from 6 October to 23 November. Besides facsimile records illustrating spatial and temporal structure of the turbulence distribution in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), routine quantitative measurements of profiles of wind and echo-signal strength were taken. Some main characteristics of the ABL behavior over the ocean were revealed through an analysis of these data as well as the results of other kinds of measurements. An important peculiarity of the ABL observed between the Canary Islands and the Azores was the presence of diurnal variation of convective turbulence strength having a maximum between 04:00 and 07:00 LT. A similar diurnal variation was observed for low-level cloud cover. Occurrence of various types of thermal stratification and their diurnal variation were obtained. Comparison of elevated stable layers and low-level cumulus showed that the lower boundary of clouds correlates well with the height of the bottom of elevated inversion layers (at heights of 200–600 m). Canary and Cabo Verde observations showed that islands strongly affect the ABL structure. The strong effect of a surface water temperature gradient on the ABL stability was observed when crossing the Canary, Azores, and Labrador currents and the Gulf Stream.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beljavskaya, V. D., Peqour, M. S., Petenko, I. V., and Shurygin, Ye. A. (1990): Investigation of boundary layer over ocean by Doppler sodar. In S. P. Singal (ed.), Acoustic Remote Sensing, Proc of the 5th Symposium on Acoustic Remote Sensing, New Delhi, 308–314.
Gaynor, J. E., and Mandics, P. A. (1978) Analysis of the tropical marine boundary layer during GATE using acoustic sounder data, Monthly Weather Rev. 2, 223–232.
Gray, W. M. (1977) Diurnal variation of deep cumulus convection over the tropical oceans. In Preprint WMO Techn. Conf. on the Energetics of the Tropical Atmosphere, Tashkent, 15–20.
Jackobson, R. W., Jr. (1979) Diurnal variations of oceanic deep cumulus convection. Paper 1. Observational Evidence. In Atm. Sci. Pap. No. 243, Dept. Atmos. Sci., Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Kallistratova, M. A., and Petenko, I. V. (1993) Study of optical turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer by acoustic remote sensing. In SPIE Vol. 1968 Atmospheric Propagation and Remote Sensing II, 607–618.
Otterstein, H., Hurtig, M., Stilke, G., Brummer, B., and Peters, G. (1978) Shipborne sodar measurements during Jonswap 2, J. of Geophys. Res. 36, 5573–5584.
Perov, V. L., Glasunov, A. V., and Repina, I. A. (1992) Cloud top boundary layer modelling over the ocean during the expedition ASTEX-91. In Preprint No 4 IAP AS USSR Preliminary results of the experiment in the Atlantic Ocean according to the program ASTEX-91, part 2, Moscow, 41–57 (in Russian with abstract in English).
Petenko, I. V., Bedulin, A. N., and Shurygin, Ye. A. (1992) Some preliminary results of sodar studies of the PBL in the ASTEX-91. In Preprint No 4 IAP AS USSR Preliminary results of the experiment in the Atlantic Ocean according to the program ASTEX-91, part 1, Moscow, 63–76, (in Russian with abstract in English).
Volkov, Yu., and Ozmidov, R., eds. (1992) Preliminary results of the experiment in the Atlantic Ocean according to the program ASTEX-91. Preprint No 4 IAP AS USSR (in Russian with abstracts in English).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Petenko, I.V., Bedulin, A.N. & Shurygin, Y.A. Sodar observations of the atmospheric boundary layer over the ocean during ASTEX-91. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 81, 63–73 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00119400
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00119400