OBSERVATIONS AND APPLICATIONS OF THE HORIZONTAL PERTURBATION WIND-FIELD WITHIN CONVECTIVE STRUCTURES OF THE MARINE ATMOSPHERIC SURFACE-LAYER

Studies involving radar remote sensing or modeling of the ocean/Marine Atmospheric Surface Layer (MASL) interface demand a thorough descript ion of how coherent convective structures couple the two mediums toget her. The current analysis provides this information for the small-scal e variability caused by boundary-layer convection. NCAR Electra 50 m a bove mean sea level (MSL) turbulence data from Project FIRE (First ISS CP [International Satellite Cloud Climatology Program] Regional Experi ment) are conditionally sampled and composited to produce horizontal p lanviews of the typical perturbation horizontal wind field within thes e convective updrafts and downdrafts. Applications of these observatio nal results, as well as similarly derived flux data from Sikora and Yo ung (1993), to the above mentioned studies, are then discussed.