Abstract
An overview is given of 50-year Cabauw observations and research on the structure and dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer. It is shown that over time this research site with its 200-m meteorological tower has grown into an atmospheric observatory with a comprehensive observational program encompassing almost all aspects of the atmospheric column including its boundary conditions. This is accomplished by the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR) a consortium of research institutes. CESAR plays an important role in the educational programs of the CESAR universities. The current boundary-layer observational program is described in detail, and other parts of the CESAR observational program discussed more briefly. Due to an open data policy the CESAR datasets are used by researchers all over the world. Examples are given of the use of the long time series for model evaluation, satellite validation, and process studies. The role of tall towers is discussed in relation to the development of more and better ground-based remote sensing techniques. CESAR is now incorporated into the Ruisdael observatory, the large-scale atmospheric research infrastructure in the Netherlands. With Ruisdael the embedding of the Dutch atmospheric community in national policy landscape, and in the European atmospheric research infrastructures is assured for the coming decade.
Highlights
At the time of the first issue of Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 50 years ago, the construction of the 213-m Cabauw meteorological tower in the Netherlands was well underway
A reference evapotranspiration product is routinely available from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) observations (Trigo et al 2018)
Maronga and Bosveld (2017) showed how well a high resolution largeeddy simulations (LES) model could simulate a typical radiation fog night at Cabauw. They found that turbulent mixing has a strong impact on the time of fog formation, which is complicated by the interaction with both radiative cooling and water vapour removal by dew deposition
Summary
The Cabauw site is located in the western part of the Netherlands (51.971°N, 4.927°E). The first years of the Cabauw site were devoted to the development of new measurement and data techniques. This resulted in two periods with continuous observations (1973 and March 1977–February 1979) as described by Wessels (1984). Several shorter experiments were done to characterize the site and the turbulent structure of the ABL. Results from this first period are described in Van Ulden and Wieringa (1996). Important developments had taken place in instrumentation and data infrastructure of the meteorological network of the Netherlands. The period 1996–2000 has been bridged by an automatic weather station at the site
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