Joint Observational Research on Nocturnal Atmospheric Dispersion of Aerosols: The JORNADA study

In April of 2005 a joint field campaign was undertaken at the Jornada Desert Research Range outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Its purpose was to quantify the nocturnal PBL structure, its dynamics, its turbulence, its wave structures and the effects of these on plume dispersion and meander. A suite of instruments provided a data set which includes simultaneous micrometeorological measurements of the boundary layer structure, turbulence, and wave activity along with continuous lidar measurement of aerosol plume releases. An overview of the project, its goals and data sets are presented as well as initial results of the study.