Aliasing Skews Vertical Velocity Observations Within Roll Structures in The Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer
Author(s)
Melvin, Emily Cristina
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to:
Permanent Link
Abstract
Accurately interpreting vertical velocity features within the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) in aircraft measurements is difficult due to the rapidly evolving 4-dimensional nature of the atmosphere combined with the motion of the aircraft. The energy and mass fluxes within vertical velocity features, such as roll structures, are not well understood due to discrepancies between the fine scale features within models and the limited sampling capabilities of research aircraft. A major, and often ignored, issue plaguing the interpretation of aircraft data is aliasing. Aliasing in the case of atmospheric measurements is the misidentification of a small-scale feature for a large-scale feature due to too low of a sampling rate and extent. By using a large eddy simulation (LES) of the MABL, this study builds on the work of Park et al., (2022) to demonstrate the impact of aliasing within simulated aircraft flight paths. Comparing synthetic flight paths with slight variations to start time and location allows for the impacts of aliasing to be identified, and for mitigation strategies to be proposed. Small changes to the start time and location of a flight are found to greatly impact the distribution and magnitude of vertical velocity within the features sampled due to the impacts of aliasing within all tested flight paths. This is concerning because those slight changes aren’t changing the physical processes within the features, but changing what narrow view we get from the measurements themselves.
Sponsor
Date
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Undergraduate Research Option Thesis