1 / 12

Automating Detection of the Planetary Boundary Layer in Aerosol Lidar Soundings

Automating Detection of the Planetary Boundary Layer in Aerosol Lidar Soundings. Virginia Sawyer Advisor: Dr. Judd Welton, NASA-GSFC. Planetary Boundary Layer. The transition between well-mixed surface air and the free atmosphere aloft.

samantha-horton
Download Presentation

Automating Detection of the Planetary Boundary Layer in Aerosol Lidar Soundings

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Automating Detection of the Planetary Boundary Layer in Aerosol Lidar Soundings Virginia Sawyer Advisor: Dr. Judd Welton, NASA-GSFC

  2. Planetary Boundary Layer • The transition between well-mixed surface air and the free atmosphere aloft. • Usually maintained by a temperature inversion, which is buoyantly stable. • Important to air quality and climate modeling.

  3. Entrainment Zone Frequently, the boundary layer is best expressed as a zone rather than a single height. This is especially true because of • Deep inversions with stably-stratified layers • Kelvin-Helmholz waves

  4. LIDAR MPLNET is composed of micro pulse lidar sites, co-located with sunphotometers in the AERONET project, to provide continuous long-term data on atmospheric structure (primarily aerosol and clouds). Network includes sites from NASA and from partners around the world. The CALIPSO satellite contains a lidar and a wide field of view camera to study aerosol and clouds. CALIPSO is part of the A-train constellation in NASA’s Earth Observing System. 532 nm 523 or 527 nm

  5. Wavelet Covariance Transform Haar Function a = width of entrainment zone b = PBL height Brooks, I.M., 2003. Finding Boundary Layer Top: Application of a Wavelet Covariance Transform to Lidar Backscatter Profiles. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol. 20, 1092-1105.

  6. MPLNET Goddard, 5/3/2001 Kelvin-Helmholz waves Elevated aerosol entrained by the PBL during the day Convective clouds Nighttime stable layers

  7. Maximum of Wf(a,b) follows cloud deck

  8. Program revised to follow aerosol layer below

  9. CALIPSO 3:10-3:15 UTC 9/21/06 Particulate from South America?

  10. CALIPSO 20:30-20:37 UTC 1/1/07 Himalayas

  11. Conclusions • The wavelet covariance transform can be used to detect the planetary boundary layer in aerosol lidar soundings. • Modifications to the algorithm filter out high clouds and elevated aerosols, and speed up calculations. • Entrainment zone depth is more difficult to find in the relatively noisy CALIPSO data.

  12. Thanks • Dr. Judd Welton, NASA • Larry Belcher, UMBC • Stephen Palm, SSAI • Research & Discover

More Related