Relationship of Height Gradients of Passive Atmospheric Properties to TheirVariances: Applications to the Ground-Based Sensing of Profiles

摘要

Ways of relating height profiles of mean atmospheric properties to theirvariances are compared. Assuming a horizontally homogeneous, time-stationary medium, all methods assert the proportionality of the variance of a property to the variance of the turbulent velocity in the medium, to the square of the height gradient of the mean, and to the inverse Vaisala-Brunt frequency squared. The paper examines the dependence of the proportionality factor on the Richardson number. Finally, the various options for retrieving humidity profiles and refractive index profiles from radar wind profiler data are discussed, and reasons are given why a system that makes use of the acoustic backscatter as well as the radar backscatter is attractive.