Boundary Layer Experiment 1996 (BLX96)

Abstract

The University of Wyoming King Air aircraft was the primary instrument platform for turbulence measurements in the bottom half of the convective boundary layer during 15 July?13 August 1996. A total of 12 successful research flights were made, each of about 4.5-h duration. Crosswind (east?west) flight patterns were flown in Oklahoma and Kansas over three sites of different land use: forest, pasture, and crops. Measurements of mean values, turbulent deviations, and turbulent fluxes of temperature, moisture, and momentum were made to test theories of convective transport, the radix layer, and cumulus potential. Additional portions of each flight included slant soundings and near-surface horizontal flights in order to determine mixed layer (ML) scaling variables such as ML depth zi, Deardorff velocity w? and buoyancy velocity wB. While the ML was shallower and the ground wetter than anticipated based on climatology, a high-quality dataset was obtained.