In June of 1992 a boundary-layer experiment was carried out near Boardman, Oregon. The campaigns were part of a program of studies under the auspices of the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, whose goal is to improve the treatment of radiative transfer, particularly as affected by clouds, in general circulation models (GCMs) used for climate studies. One aspect of this program is concerned with the determination of appropriate lower boundary conditions for such models and the representation of subgrid-scale variability in regions where the surface conditions are not uniform. To study this problem, boundary-layer and surface properties were measured over a region of two sharply contrasting land types: a large, dry, sagebrush steppe area and irrigated farmland that formed the east, northeast, and western borders of the steppe. A combination of surface flux instrumentation, airsondes, sodars, and near-surface wind and temperature sensors was used. Measurements were carried out over the eastern portion of this region, which featured a well-defined boundary between the dry and irrigated areas. In this paper, the authors present some results from those observations and from a set of numerical simulations that address the effects of inhomogeneous surface fluxes on boundary-layer structure.
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