the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
08 Jan 2021
08 Jan 2021
Turbulence Dissipation Rate Estimated from Lidar Observations During the LAPSE-RATE Field Campaign
- 1Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, 80303, United States
- 2National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, 80401, United States
- 3University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology, Norman, 73072, United States
- 4University of Oklahoma Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling, Norman, 73072, United States
- 1Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, 80303, United States
- 2National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, 80401, United States
- 3University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology, Norman, 73072, United States
- 4University of Oklahoma Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling, Norman, 73072, United States
Abstract. The International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely-piloted Aircraft (ISARRA) hosted a flight week in July 2018 to demonstrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ (UAS) capabilities in sampling the atmospheric boundary layer. This week-long experiment was called the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign. Numerous remotely piloted aircrafts and ground-based instruments were deployed with the objective of capturing meso- and microscale phenomena in the atmospheric boundary layer. The University of Oklahoma deployed one Halo Streamline lidar and the University of Colorado Boulder deployed two Windcube lidars. In this paper, we use data collected from these Doppler lidars to estimate turbulence dissipation rate throughout the campaign. We observe large temporal variability of turbulence dissipation close to the surface with the Windcube lidars that is not detected by the Halo Streamline. However, the Halo lidar enables estimating dissipation rate within the whole boundary layer, where a diurnal variability emerges. We also find a higher correspondence in turbulence dissipation between the Windcube lidars, which are not co-located, compared to the Halo and Windcube lidar that are co-located, suggesting a significant influence of measurement volume on the retrieved values of dissipation rate. This dataset have been submitted to Zenodo (Sanchez Gomez and Lundquist, 2020) for free and open access (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4399967).
Miguel Sanchez Gomez et al.
Status: final response (author comments only)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2020-406', Anonymous Referee #1, 05 Feb 2021
The manuscript presents a data set on the turbulent dissipation rate derived from 3 lidar systems during the LAPSE-RATE field campaign in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. Although the calculations of the dissipation rate are based on previously published methods and algorithms is the data set of interest, as it includes the possibility of comparison and validation of the algorithms i) at two different locations (by two identical Leosphere WindCube lidars) and ii) for two different lidar systems at one location (Leosphere Windcube v1 vs. Halo Streamline).
The manuscript is in general clearly written and well structured and the data are well described and presented. I see, however one main issue in the lowest layers of the Halo instrument. The yellowish and very constant (at least in height) "bright band" around 50 m looks rather suspicious, and I am rather in doubt that this is an expression of the surface layer as the authors state. I hypothesize that this is some kind of measurement artefact close to the ground. If it would be a real (and of course expected) enhancement due to the surface layer, I would expect a clear diurnal variation in its vertical extension (which I can only see in very weak nuances) and an additional clear dependency on the wind speed. This has to be closer investigated and discussed before I can recommend the manuscript to be considered for publication. I firmly believe there is a measurement/evaluation issue in the lowest range gates for the Halo system. A first important test would be to look into (and also present) two additional time height plots of horizontal and vertical velocity in Fig. 4.
Minor issues:
- line 50: which type of the HATPRO are you using? would be useful and consistent with the type for the lidar
- line 50: is the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer "home-made" or do you also have manyufacturer and type for it?
- Fig. 1: an additional overview map on the location on a bit larger scale would be desireable! And I also would highly prefer the x and y axes labeling in km instead of degree
- Fig. 6: I assume you have an issue with artificially enhanced dissipation rates by the Halo lidar that is related to the strange bright band in the figure 4a
- references: inconsistencies in abbreviating/not-abbreviating journal names
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Miguel Sanchez Gomez, 01 May 2021
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-406/essd-2020-406-AC1-supplement.pdf
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Miguel Sanchez Gomez, 01 May 2021
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2020-406', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Mar 2021
This is likely to be a valuable addition to the data corpus of environmental turbulence measurements. I have two general recommendations, one superficial the second of more concern.Â
(1) Minor. The Introduction and in part the summary both refer to the field campaign being part of LAPSE-RATE which was focused on remotely piloted aircraft (RPA). The implication is that paper uses data from instruments on RPA platfroms. AS far as I can see, this may be a later intention, but for this paper it is not relevant.Â
(2). Major. The paper decribes and compares two lidar systems, both used to estimate turbulent dissiaption. A reader coming to this paper and data set would wish to know (a) Are the instrument systems actually fit for purpose to do this, and (b) are these data useful. This is not possible to judge because there is no indication of error analysis or displays of confidence limits or other typical presentations when measurement sets (whether instrument or model output) are compared.Â
Figures 2 and 3 are noteworth here: as far as I can see, figure 2 is smoothing of a noisy curve (using limted splines), whist figure 3 is fitting a Butterworth-style transfer with pre-defined cutoff (-5/3). There is no knowledge gained from these. I recommend some estimate (with error) of say the displation decay, and whether it agrees or not with Kolmagorov. Only when we have these statistical results can the quality and benefit of these data and methods be assessed by the reader. Â
NB I have ticked POOR for Usefulness, Completeness and Data Quality: this should rather read 'not proven' but that tick box is not available.
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Miguel Sanchez Gomez, 01 May 2021
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-406/essd-2020-406-AC2-supplement.pdf
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Miguel Sanchez Gomez, 01 May 2021
Miguel Sanchez Gomez et al.
Data sets
Turbulence dissipation rate estimated from Doppler Lidar measurements during LAPSE-RATE Miguel Sanchez Gomez and Julie K. Lundquist https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4399967
Miguel Sanchez Gomez et al.
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