PNNL

Abstract

Dual-Doppler lidar observations are used to investigate the structure and evolution of surface layer flow over a suburban area. The observations were made during the Joint Urban 2003 (JU2003) field experiment in Oklahoma City in the summer of 2003. This study focuses specifically on a 10-hour sequence of scan data beginning shortly after noon local time on July 7, 2003. During this period two coherent Doppler lidars performed overlapping low elevation angle sector scans upwind and south of Oklahoma City’s central business district (CBD). Radial velocity data from the two lidars are processed to reveal the structure and evolution of the horizontal velocity field in the surface layer throughout the afternoon and evening transition periods. The retrieved velocity fields clearly show a tendency for turbulence structures to be elongated in the direction of the mean flow throughout the entire 10-hour study period. As the stratification changed from unstable to weakly stable the turbulence structures became increasingly more linearly organized, and the cross-stream separation between high- and low-speed regoins decreased. The spatially resolved velocity fields are used to estimate streamwise and cross-stream turbulence length scales as functions of stability.