Turbulence Characteristics over an urban domain observed by Doppler lidars

The Joint Urban 2003 (JUT2003) project, a cooperative undertaking to study turbulent transport and dispersion in urban atmospheric boundary layers, was conducted in Oklahoma City in June and July of 2003. Two Doppler lidars and many sonic anemometers were deployed to monitor the wind field during the experiment. A large amount of lidar data has been collected for various wind conditions, and we will present some analysis and results related to the spatial structure of turbulence using the Doppler lidar data. The effect of both the roughness and the thermal properties in the urban setting on the length scale of large eddies, the turbulent intensity, and the boundary layer height will be analyzed. Some of the particular characteristics of the urban environment, such as the turbulent wakes on the lee side of buildings and the downwind wake of the central business district, will also be investigated.