Sixth Conference on Coastal Atmospheric and Oceanic Prediction and Processes

3.13

Airborne Doppler Wind Lidar Investigations of OLEs over the Eastern Pacific and the Implications for Flux Parameterizations

George D. Emmitt, Simpson Weather Associates, Charlottesville, VA; and C. O'Handley, S. Greco, R. Foster, and R. A. Brown

Bulk flux parameterizations are the standard for air/sea interaction modeling. However, such simplistic parameterization schemes are suspect in the presence of Organized Large Eddies (OLE) found frequently over the oceans, in particular along their eastern boundaries. Models of OLE structures are difficult to validate through visualization since they are three dimensional and found in clear air with the exception of the capping cloud streets. A unique Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) has been installed on a Twin Otter aircraft with funding from the Office of Naval Research and the Integrated Program Office of the NPOESS. The airborne lidar referred to as TODWL (Twin Otter DWL) has provided a set of Marine Boundary Layer observations over Monterey Bay that has been used to evaluate an analytic model for planetary boundary layer roll vortices. The model/observation comparisons will be presented along with a discussion of the implications to flux parameterization for coupled ocean atmosphere models.

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Session 3, Ocean-atmosphere-land Observations, Models and Data Analysis
Tuesday, 11 January 2005, 1:30 PM-5:30 PM

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