Elastic backscatter lidar and in situ observations of sea-breeze fronts in Dixon, California

The NCAR REAL (www.lidar.ucar.edu) was deployed as part of the Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (CHATS) from 15 March to 9 June 2007 in Dixon, California. The lidar ran almost continuously and unattended during this period. Near-horizontal (PPI) and vertical (RHI) scans were collected in a repeating sequential order to reveal atmospheric structure and create flow visualizations in both dimensions simultaneously. The REAL was located 1.6 km north of a 30-m tall NCAR ISF instrumented tower. Several sea-breeze fronts were observed during the deployment. The lidar animations reveal structure and motion of the fronts while in situ measurements from the tower reveal changes in air-mass properties.