Emerging application areas such as air pollution in megacities, wind energy, urban security, and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles have intensified scientific and societal interest in mountain meteorology. To address scientific needs and help improve the prediction of mountain weather, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded a research effort—the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program—that draws the expertise of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multinational group of researchers. The program has four principal thrusts, encompassing modeling, experimental, technology, and parameterization components, directed at diagnosing model deficiencies and critical knowledge gaps, conducting experimental studies, and developing tools for model improvements. The access to the Granite Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Testbed of the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, as well as to a suite of conventional and novel high-end airborne and surface measurement platforms, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to investigate phenomena of time scales from a few seconds to a few days, covering spatial extents of tens of kilometers down to millimeters. This article provides an overview of the MATERHORN and a glimpse at its initial findings. Orographic forcing creates a multitude of time-dependent submesoscale phenomena that contribute to the variability of mountain weather at mesoscale. The nexus of predictions by mesoscale model ensembles and observations are described, identifying opportunities for further improvements in mountain weather forecasting.
Abstract. Low-level jet (LLJ)-generated gravity waves were observed over Oklahoma City by a scanning Doppler wind lidar during the transition periods of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) from stable to convective conditions in the mornings after sunrise. The temperature profiles had a multilayer structure with a shallow neutral layer immediately above the ground and a stable cap layer above the neutral layer. The wind profiles exhibited a typical shape of a LLJ with nearly linear growth of wind speed with respect to height, and maximum wind speed occurred at the top of the stable cap layer. The average wavelength and its relation with mean wind and temperature profiles are characterized with data from Doppler wind lidar, radiosonde, and wind profiler. A linear stability analysis was performed to check the stratification conditions for wave occurrence. The wind signals from sonic anemometers near the ground were separated into waves and turbulence parts using a wavelet decomposition method, and the momentum fluxes due to the wave motions and turbulence were computed. The downward gravity wave momentum flux was 1.5 to 3.0 times of turbulent momentum flux. The analysis indicated that gravity wave momentum transport from the stable cap layer downward is one of the mechanisms of stable-to-convective transition in the LLJ-dominated ABL.
, "Triple Doppler wind lidar observations during the mountain terrain atmospheric modeling and observations field campaign," J. Appl. Remote Sens. 10(2), 026015 (2016), doi: 10.1117/1.JRS.10.026015. . The feasibility of observing large turbulent eddies was investigated by pointing three DWL at an intersecting probe volume adjoining a sonic anemometer mounted on the top of a meteorological tower. The time series and spectra of the sonic anemometer measurement were compared with the lidars. The lidar radial velocities closely followed those of the sonic anemometer, both in time and in the low frequency spectral domain, suggesting that the DWL technique is suitable for observing large turbulent eddies in the ABL. In addition, coordinated scanning triple DWL were used to directly measure the three-dimensional wind vectors, thus circumventing the assumptions required in using single or dual lidar deployments for full velocity measurements. The scanning triple lidar results were in satisfactory agreement with data from towerbased sonic anemometers. Notwithstanding, because of the difficulty of obtaining temporal and spatial synchronizations of the three lidars, the data were scant since a large amount of data had to be rejected in postprocessing. This difficulty is surmountable in the future by employing a robust control system for coordinated scanning.
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