Characterizing Water Vapor Advection During LAFE with Thermodynamic and Kinematic Profilers

A major challenge associated with investigating land-atmosphere feedback in a specific domain is characterizing the moisture budget within that domain. A significant factor in the moisture budget is the three-dimensional advection of water vapor into and out of the target area. While traditional synoptic-scale observations are usually insufficient to perform such an analysis due to large spatial and temporal gaps in the observing network, a network of ground-based remote sensing profilers is well-suited for such a task.

The spatial domain of the Land Atmosphere Feedback Experiment (LAFE) was the immediate environment surrounding the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) in Oklahoma. This domain is surrounded by numerous extended facilities, each of which hosts thermodynamic profiles from an Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) and kinematic profiles from a Doppler lidar. These instruments produce profiles with a temporal resolution of approximately 5 mins, enabling a mesoscale analysis of water vapor advection throughout the boundary layer and greatly enhancing the understanding of how larger-scale phenomena are influencing the thermodynamic characteristics of the LAFE domain during IOPs.