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Turbulence above Lake Ontario: Velocity and scalar statistics

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Abstract

Measurements of the fluctuations of wind, temperature and humidity were made with an instrumented aircraft at altitudes from 30 to 300m above Lake Ontario. The variations of the standard deviations of these fluctuations are examined. By applying Monin-Obukhov similarity theory based on local fluxes, it is shown that the vertical velocity, temperature and humidity fluctuations scale with the local Monin-Obukhov length. In the limit of free convection, 1/3 and −1/3 power laws are approached with constants of 1.2, 1.2, and 0.8 for vertical velocity, temperature and humidity, respectively. The von Karman scale lengths increase with height but were much larger than those found by Taylor et al. (1970).

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McBean, G.A., MacPherson, J.I. Turbulence above Lake Ontario: Velocity and scalar statistics. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 10, 181–197 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00229284

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