SONIC ANEMOMETRY AND THERMOMETRY - THEORETICAL BASIS AND DATA-PROCESSING SOFTWARE

The use of fast and precise anemological and temperature data has alwa ys been considered promising particularly in the fields of Planetary B oundary Layer (PBL) dynamics, air pollution monitoring and agrometeoro logy experimental study. To date, this desire can be satisfied at leas t in part by industrial-strength implementations of sonic anemometers at a reasonable cost. The processing of sonic anemometer data is not s uitable for paper-and-pencil methods; in addition, the few existing so ftware packages are often not available to the user community and are tied to nonstandard platforms. This has curbed the diffusion of the so nic anemometer more than its past high cost, which has now been greatl y reduced. In this work, the authors list methods for extracting physi cally relevant information from the sonic anemometer measurements, and present software implementation of this methodology that permits obta ining real-time information from the sonic anemometer. (C) 1997 Elsevi er Science Ltd.