Michael S. Buban

Since drought and excessive rainfall can have significant socioeconomic impacts, it is important to have accurate high-resolution gridded datasets that can help improve analysis and forecasting of these conditions. One such widely used dataset is the Parameter-Elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM). PRISM uses a digital elevation model (DEM) to obtain gridded elevation analyses and then uses a regression analysis along with approximately 15 000 surface precipitation measurements to produce a 4-km resolution daily precipitation product over the conterminous United States. The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) consists of 114 stations that take highly accurate meteorological measurements across all regions of the United States. A comparison between the USCRN and PRISM was performed using data from 2006 to 2018. There were good comparisons between the two datasets across nearly all seasons and regions; most mean daily differences were <1 mm, with most absolute daily differences ~5 mm. The most general characteristics were for a net dry bias in the PRISM data in the Southwest and a net moist bias in the southern United States. Verifying the PRISM dataset provides us with confidence it can be used with estimates of evapotranspiration, high-resolution gridded soil properties, and vegetation datasets to produce a daily gridded soil moisture product for operational use in the analyses and prediction of drought and excessive soil moisture conditions.

The Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 (CHEESEHEAD19) is an ongoing National Science Foundation project based on an intensive field campaign that occurred from June-October 2019. The purpose of the study is to examine how the atmospheric boundary layer responds to spatial heterogeneity in surface energy fluxes. One of the main objectives is to test whether lack of energy balance closure measured by eddy covariance (EC) towers is related to mesoscale atmospheric processes. Finally, the project evaluates data-driven methods for scaling surface energy fluxes, with the aim to improve model-data comparison and integration. To address these questions, an extensive suite of ground, tower, profiling, and airborne instrumentation was deployed over a 10×10 km domain of a heterogeneous forest ecosystem in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin USA, centered on the existing Park Falls 447-m tower that anchors an Ameriflux/NOAA supersite (US-PFa / WLEF). The project deployed one of the world’s highest-density networks of above-canopy EC measurements of surface energy fluxes. This tower EC network was coupled with spatial measurements of EC fluxes from aircraft, maps of leaf and canopy properties derived from airborne spectroscopy, ground-based measurements of plant productivity, phenology, and physiology, and atmospheric profiles of wind, water vapor, and temperature using radar, sodar, lidar, microwave radiometers, infrared interferometers, and radiosondes. These observations are being used with large eddy simulation and scaling experiments to better understand sub-mesoscale processes and improve formulations of sub-grid scale processes in numerical weather and climate models.

The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper

Rotary-wing small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are increasingly being used for sampling thermodynamic and chemical properties of the Earth’s atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) because of their ability to measure at high spatial and temporal resolutions. Therefore, they have the potential to be used for long-term quasi-continuous monitoring of the ABL, which is critical for improving ABL parameterizations and improving numerical weather prediction (NWP) models through data assimilation. Before rotary-wing aircraft can be used for these purposes, however, their performance and the sensors used therein must be adequately characterized. In the present study, we describe recent calibration and validation procedures for thermodynamic sensors used on two rotary-wing aircraft: A DJI S-1000 and MD4-1000. These evaluations indicated a high level of confidence in the on-board measurements. We then used these measurements to characterize the spatiotemporal variability of near-surface (up to 300-m AGL) temperature and moisture fields as a component of two recent field campaigns: The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment in the Southeast U.S. (VORTEX-SE) in Alabama, and the Land Atmosphere Feedback Experiment (LAFE) in northern Oklahoma.

Upscaling point measurements from micrometeorological towers is a challenging task that is important for a variety of applications, for example, in process studies of convection initiation, carbon and energy budget studies, and the improvement of model parameterizations. In the present study, a technique was developed to determine the horizontal variability in sensible heat flux H surrounding micrometeorological towers. The technique was evaluated using 15-min flux observations, as well as measurements of land surface temperature and air temperature obtained from small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) conducted during a one-day measurement campaign. The computed H was found to be comparable to the micrometeorological measurements to within 5–10 W m⁻². Furthermore, when comparing H computed using this technique with H determined using large-eddy simulations (LES), differences of −2 were typically found. Thus, implementing this technique using observations from sUAS will help determine sensible heat flux variability at horizontal spatial scales larger than can be provided from flux tower measurements alone.

This study presents a series of idealized simulations that attempt to replicate shear zones typical of drylines and other near-surface boundaries in the presence of horizontal virtual density gradients. The series of dry simulations are initialized to contain a north–south-oriented potential temperature gradient collocated with a constant-vorticity shear zone and employ north–south periodic boundary conditions. In all simulations, the shear zones frontogenetically collapse as wavelike perturbations develop that eventually roll up into discrete vortices. Convergence associated with the developing solenoidally forced secondary vertical circulation induces an accumulative shear zone contraction, which in turn increases the vertical vorticity of both the shear zone and the intensifying vortices, owing primarily to stretching that is partially offset by tilting of the vertical vorticity into the horizontal by the secondary circulation. The simulated vortices bear strong morphological resemblance to vortices reported in many earlier laboratory and numerical studies. To assess hypothesized baroclinic effects on the instability mechanism, the present results are compared to a previous study of barotropic horizontal shearing instability (HSI). Linear theory has been modified for the baroclinic cases by introducing a parametric model of frontal contraction, according to which the growth rate expressions incorporate model-prescribed, continuously varying shear zone widths. This modified parametric model is found to provide excellent agreement with the growth rates computed from the present simulations, suggesting that HSI can be extended to the baroclinic shear zone cases to a very good approximation over a range of near-surface boundary types.

Motivated by high-resolution observations of small-scale atmospheric vortices along near-surface boundaries, this study presents a series of idealized simulations that attempt to replicate shear zones typical of drylines and other near-surface boundaries. The series of dry, constant potential temperature simulations are initialized with a north–south-oriented constant-vorticity shear zone and north–south periodic boundary conditions. In all simulations, the shear zones develop wavelike perturbations that eventually roll up into discrete vortices. These vortices have features resembling those observed in many laboratory and numerical studies (i.e., instabilities developed into elliptical cores connected by vorticity braids that precess and contain pressure minima in their centers). To assess the instability mechanism, the results are compared to linear theory. Excellent agreement is found between predictions from linear theory for the wavenumber of maximum growth as a function of shear zone width and growth rate as a function of shear zone vorticity, suggesting to a very good first approximation, horizontal shearing instability (HSI) is responsible for the growth of initial small perturbations. It is also found that predictions of linear theory tend to extend well into the nonlinear regime. Finally, preferred regions of cumulus formation are assessed by including moisture in four simulations. Maximum updrafts and simulated cumuli tend to form along the periphery of cores and/or along the braided regions adjacent to the cores. Because of the important modulating effect of misocyclone development via HSI and subsequent moisture transport, cumulus spacing and size/depth are also dependent on the shear zone width and vorticity.

A dryline and misocyclones have been simulated in a cloud-resolving model by applying specified initial and time-dependent lateral boundary conditions obtained from analyses of the 22 May 2002 International H2O Project (IHOP_2002) dataset. The initial and lateral boundary conditions were obtained from a combination of the time–spaced Lagrangian analyses for temperature and moisture with horizontal velocities from multiple-Doppler wind syntheses. The simulated dryline, horizontal dry-convective rolls (HCRs) and open cells (OCCs), misocyclones, and cumulus clouds are similar to the corresponding observed features. The misocyclones move northward at nearly the mean boundary layer (BL) wind speed, rotate dryline gradients owing to their circulations, and move the local dryline eastward via their passage. Cumuli develop along a secondary dryline, along HCR and OCC segments between the primary and secondary drylines, along HCR and OCC segments that have moved over the dryline, and within the dryline updraft. After the initial shearing instability develops, misocyclogenesis proceeds from tilting and stretching of vorticity by the persistent secondary dryline circulation. The resulting misocyclone evolution is discussed.

A new Lagrangian analysis technique is developed to assimilate in situ boundary layer measurements using multi-Doppler-derived wind fields, providing output fields of water vapor mixing ratio, potential temperature, and virtual potential temperature from which the lifting condensation level (LCL) and relative humidity (RH) fields are derived. The Lagrangian analysis employs a continuity principle to bidirectionally distribute observed values of conservative variables with the 3D, evolving boundary layer airflow, followed by temporal and spatial interpolation to an analysis grid. Cloud is inferred at any grid point whose height z > zLCL or equivalently where RH ≥ 100%. Lagrangian analysis of the cumulus field is placed in the context of gridded analyses of visible satellite imagery and photogrammetric cloud-base area analyses. Brief illustrative examples of boundary layer morphology derived with the Lagrangian analysis are presented based on data collected during the International H2O Project (IHOP): 1) a dryline on 22 May 2002; 2) a cold-frontal–dryline “triple point” intersection on 24 May 2002. The Lagrangian analysis preserves the sharp thermal gradients across the cold front and drylines and reveals the presence of undulations and plumes of water vapor mixing ratio and virtual potential temperature associated with deep penetrative updraft cells and convective roll circulations. Derived cloud fields are consistent with satellite-inferred cloud cover and cloud-base locations.