Remote sensing of the tropical rain forest boundary layer using pulsed Doppler lidar

G. Pearson,C. Collier,F. Davies

doi:10.5194/acp-10-5891-2010

Abstract

Abstract. Within the framework of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Oxidant and Particle Photochemical Processes (OP3) project, a pulsed Doppler lidar was deployed for a 3 month period in the tropical rain forest of Borneo to remotely monitor vertical and horizontal transport, aerosol distributions and clouds in the lower levels of the atmosphere. The Doppler velocity measurements reported here directly observe the mixing process and it is suggested that this is the most appropriate methodology to use in analysing the dispersion of canopy sourced species into the lower atmosphere. These data are presented with a view to elucidating the scales and structures of the transport processes, which effect the chemical and particulate concentrations in and above the forest canopy, for applications in the parameterisation of climate models.

Highlights

The transport of aerosols and chemical species from the surface, through the boundary layer and in to the free troposphere is governed by the dynamics within the lower levels of the atmosphere (Warneke et al, 2001; Eerdekens et al, 2009; Ganzeveld et al, 2008; Fisch et al, 2004 and VilaGuerau de Arellano et al, 2009)
This paper presents an analysis of the data from this instrument with a view to visualising and parameterising the dynamics and structures in the tropical boundary layer and their diurnal variability
Within the frame work of the OP3 experiment, a pulsed Doppler lidar system has been deployed to the rain forest of north east Borneo in order to characterise the tropical boundary layer

Summary

Introduction

The transport of aerosols and chemical species from the surface, through the boundary layer and in to the free troposphere is governed by the dynamics within the lower levels of the atmosphere (Warneke et al, 2001; Eerdekens et al, 2009; Ganzeveld et al, 2008; Fisch et al, 2004 and VilaGuerau de Arellano et al, 2009). These dynamics have as their driving force the incoming solar radiation, the surface energy partitioning, vertical gradients of wind speed, potential temperature and moisture and the geostrophic wind. The analysis reported here presents results pertaining to the vertical velocity, aerosol distributions and the statistics of the cloud coverage

The tropical boundary layer

Lidar observations of the boundary layer

Description of instrument and deployment

Results and discussion

Conclusions and implications for modeling