88th Annual Meeting (20-24 January 2008)

Wednesday, 23 January 2008: 11:45 AM
Ship-based lidar measurements of nocturnal mean winds, mixing height and boundary layer dynamics and correlation to Houston ozone measurements during TexAQS II
220 (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
Sara Tucker, CIRES/Univ. of Colorado, and NOAA/ESRL, Boulder, CO; and W. A. Brewer, C. J. Senff, R. M. Banta, and W. M. Angevine
Poster PDF (193.6 kB)
During the 2006 Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS II), NOAA's Chemical Sciences Division deployed a coherent Doppler lidar on the aft deck of the flagship Ronald H. Brown. We used scanning velocity data to derive horizontal mean wind and mixing profiles, from the surface up through the top of the aerosol boundary layer, throughout a 6 week period as the ship traversed areas ranging from the Houston Ship Channel, Galveston Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico. High temporal and vertical resolution profiles acquired when the ship was close to Houston reveal interesting correlations between nighttime dynamics and ozone measurements. We found that nights with nocturnal Low Level Jets tend to be followed by low ozone days, and nights with lower wind speed and directional shear capped mixed layers are often followed by high ozone days. We present the relevant lidar observations from this study as well as mesoscale meteorological conditions and corresponding ship-based ozone and ozone precursor measurements for each event.

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