Published in

MDPI, Atmosphere, 4(8), p. 79, 2017

DOI: 10.3390/atmos8040079

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Application of Convective Condensation Level Limiter in Convective Boundary Layer Height Retrieval Based on Lidar Data

Journal article published in 2017 by Hong Li, Yi Yang ORCID, Xiao-Ming Hu ORCID, Zhongwei Huang, Guoyin Wang, Beidou Zhang
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Micro pulse lidar is a promising tool for retrieving the convective boundary layer height (CBLH), but its application has been hindered by sharp extinction of the signal in high humidity conditions, e.g., clouds. To remedy this, we developed an effective and simple limiter to obtain more accurate estimates of the CBLH. The limiter is based on the algorithm for the convective condensation level (CCL) and is aimed at limiting the vertical extent of the lidar backscatter profile used in lidar methods to search for the CBLH. Four lidar methods (i.e., the gradient method, the idealized backscatter method, and two forms of the wavelet covariance methods) are used to calculate the CBLH with (or without) the limiter added. Compared to the CBLH calculated by the parcel method from microwave radiometer temperature data, more accurate retrieval of the CBLH is carried out with the limiter applied in four cloudy cases.