Airborne observation of mixing across the entrainment zone during PARADE 2011
This study presents the analysis of the structure and air mass characteristics of the lower atmosphere during the field campaign PARADE (PArticles and RAdicals: Diel observations of the impact of urban and biogenic Emissions) on Mount Kleiner Feldberg in southwestern Germany during late summer 2011. We analysed measurements of meteorological variables (temperature, moisture, pressure, wind speed and direction) from radio soundings and of chemical tracers (carbon dioxide, ozone) from aircraft measurements. We focus on the thermodynamic and dynamic properties that control the chemical distribution of atmospheric constituents in the boundary layer. We show that the evolution of tracer profiles…
Convective Squalls over the Eastern Equatorial Atlantic
Abstract The Congo Basin and the adjacent equatorial eastern Atlantic are among the most active regions of the world in terms of intense deep moist convection, leading to frequent lightning and severe squalls. Studying the dynamics and climatology of this convection is difficult due to a very sparse operational network of ground-based observations. Here, a detailed analysis of recently available high temporal resolution meteorological observations from three oil platforms off the coast of Angola spanning the three wet seasons from 2006/07 to 2008/09 is presented. The annual cycle of squall days as identified from wind data closely follows that of convective available potential energy (CAPE)…
Upper tropospheric water vapour and its interaction with cirrus clouds as seen from IAGOS long-term routine in-situ observations
IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) performs long-term routinein situobservations of atmospheric chemical composition (O3, CO, NOx, NOy, CO2, CH4), water vapour, aerosols, clouds, and temperature on a global scale by operating compact instruments on board of passenger aircraft. The unique characteristics of the IAGOS data set originate from the global scale sampling on air traffic routes with similar instrumentation such that the observations are truly comparable and well suited for atmospheric research on a statistical basis. Here, we present the analysis of 15 months of simultaneous observations of relative humidity with respect to ice (RHice) and ice crystal number …