Assessment of Urban Planetary Boundary Layer Dynamics using Lidar, Microwave Radiometer and Ceilometer Observations over New York City Area

Details Assessment of Urban Planetary Boundary Layer Dynamics using Lidar, Microwave Radiometer and Ceilometer Observations over New York City Area Assessment of Urban Planetary Boundary Layer Dynamics using Lidar, Microwave Radiometer and Ceilometer Observations over New York City Area

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.a13j..07g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #A13J-07

Physics

[0305] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Aerosols And Particles, [0343] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Planetary Atmospheres, [0345] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Pollution: Urban And Regional, [0480] Biogeosciences / Remote Sensing

Scientific paper

Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) dynamics is crucial in providing accurate air quality forecasts and is very useful in assessing air-transport models. In particular, incorrect determination of PBL dynamics can lead to imprecise surface particulate matter (PM) monitoring since aerosols are usually well mixed within the PBL during the convective heating period. However, PBL dynamics is strongly driven by surface flux measurements which are strongly influenced on the complexities of the urban surface including surface albedo and roughness parameters. Therefore direct assessment of the PBL height dynamics using active sensors is desired to assess the different urban parameterizations. This paper presents long term statistical data comparing the convective PBL growth obtained from lidar based measurements with different Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) parameterizations as well as an urbanized high resolution (uWRF) method based on 3 level urban structure parameterizations. We find that the operational bulk parameterizations used by WRF generally overestimate both the initiation and magnitude of the mixing layer height. This can be explained as an underestimate of the urban surface roughness that tends to reduce the surface buoyant flux. However, we find that comparisons with uWRF tend to overcorrect the convective growth. In support of these efforts, we develop an improved method to separate the convective layer from residual layer and clouds within the lidar signal. Further model assessments include water vapor and temperature from a passive Microwave radiometer. In particular, we find that the differential temperature between air and surface temperature is generally overestimated in the standard WRF models which is consistent with PBL height observations. Estimate PBL (black dash line) and Lidar Measurements on July 2, 2010

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