Abstract
Radiosonde data recorded during the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses Special Observing Period 3 (AMMA SOP3) field campaign in West Africa (August 15–September 15, 2006) were used to examine air-coast/land coupling. Different turbulent radiosonde measurements were averaged over three levels (level 1: ~3 m, next level 2: ~10 m and lastly level 3: ~20 m) in the surface layer. These data enabled the comparison of turbulent fluxes with other variables, as well as the study of the scaling of surface layers for different areas in aerodynamically smooth/rough and relatively dry or wet conditions. Results showed stable and unstable stratifications at night-time. Drag coefficient over the coastal and inland footprints presents the same order of magnitude and could not be an indicator for the two different areas. However, the disparate night-time variation in sensible heat flux is substantially more pronounced over land than over the coast and can, therefore, be considered as an indicator of different surfaces. The underlying assumptions of Monin–Obukhov Similarity Theory (MOST) are consistently violated due to surface heterogeneities, but offsets from MOST are smaller for stable and unstable conditions, as well as for scaled standard deviations over the coast and overland. In addition, flux-profile relationships from MOST show a poor match with observations.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the AMMA database community for the radiosonde data. The authors gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers and the associate editor for their constructive comments and valuable suggestions, which significantly improved the presentation of the final manuscript.
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Gislain R Mekompoamb: Conceptualization, methodology, data curation, numerical modelling, formal analysis, writing – original draft. André Lenouo: Conceptualization, data curation, writing – review and editing of the draft manuscript. Clément Tchawoua: Visualization, supervision.
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Communicated by Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay
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Mekompoamb, G.R., Lenouo, A. & Tchawoua, C. Air-coast/inland footprints interaction in stable conditions during the AMMA SOP3 field experiment. J Earth Syst Sci 132, 191 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-023-02206-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-023-02206-x