Abstract
An experimental campaign, Study of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Environmental at Dome C, was held during 2005 at the French-Italian station of Concordia at Dome C. Ground-based remote sensors, as well as in situ instrumentation, were used during the experimental campaign. The measurements allowed the direct estimation of the polar atmospheric boundary-layer height and the test of several parametrizations for the unstable and stable boundary layers. During the months of January and February, weak convection was observed while, during the polar night, a long-lived stable boundary layer occurred continuously. Under unstable stratification the mixing-layer height was determined using the sodar backscattered echoes and potential temperature profiles. The two estimations are highly correlated, with the mixing height ranging between 30 and 350 m. A simple prognostic one-dimensional model was used to estimate the convective mixing-layer height, with the correlation coefficient between observations and model results being 0.66. The boundary-layer height under stable conditions was estimated from radiosounding profiles as the height where the critical Richardson number is reached; values between 10 and 150 m were found. A visual inspection of potential temperature profiles was also used as further confirmation of the experimental height; the results of the two methods are in good agreement. Six parametrizations from the literature for the stable boundary-layer height were tested. Only the parametrization that considers the long-lived stable boundary layer and takes into account the interaction of the stable layer with the free atmosphere is in agreement with the observations.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Italian Antarctic Research Programme (PNRA) in the framework of the French-Italian “Dome C” project. The authors wish to thank the logistics staff at Concordia for their support during the experimental fieldwork, and thank Dr. A. Pellegrini and the RMO staff for providing radiosoundings at Concordia. A special thanks to Dr. G. Dargaud who over-wintered at Concordia station during 2005. The authors also wish to thank Dr. G. Mastrantonio, Dr. A. Viola and Mr. A. Conidi for their contributions in the realization of STABLEDC.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Pietroni, I., Argentini, S., Petenko, I. et al. Measurements and Parametrizations of the Atmospheric Boundary-Layer Height at Dome C, Antarctica. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 143, 189–206 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-011-9675-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-011-9675-4