Abstract
Comprehensive measurements on the mountainous island of Corsica were used to investigate how the mountain atmospheric boundary layer (mountain ABL) in a valley downstream of the main mountain ridge was influenced by the upstream flow. The data used were mainly collected with the mobile observation platform KITcube during the first special observation period of the Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment (HyMeX) in 2012 and were based on various in situ, remote sensing and aircraft measurements. Two days in autumn 2012 were analyzed in detail. On these days the mountain ABL evolution was a result of convection and thermally-driven circulations as well as terrain-induced dynamically-driven flows. During periods when dynamically-driven flows were dominant, warm and dry air from aloft with a large-scale westerly wind component was transported downwards into the valley. On one day, these flows controlled the mountain ABL characteristics in a large section of the valley for several hours, while on the other day their impact was observed in a smaller section of the valley for about 1 h only. To explain the observations we considered a theoretical concept based on uniform upstream stratification and wind speed, and calculated the non-dimensional mountain height and the horizontal aspect ratio of the barrier to relate the existing conditions to diagnosed regimes of stratified flow past a ridge. On both days, wave breaking, flow splitting and lee vortices were likely to occur. Besides the upstream conditions, a reduction of stability in the valley seemed to be important for the downward transport to reach the ground. The spatio-temporal structure of such a mountain ABL over complex terrain, which was affected by various interacting flows, differed a lot from that of the classical ABL over homogeneous, flat terrain and it is stressed that the traditional ABL definitions need to be revised when applying them to complex terrain.
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