THE LIDARS IN FLAT TERRAIN (LIFT) EXPERIMENT

The authors describe and present early results from the July-August 19 96 Lidars in Flat Terrain (LIFT) experiment. LIFT was a boundary layer experiment that made use of recently developed Doppler, aerosol backs catter, and ozone lidars, along with radars and surface instrumentatio n, to study the structure and evolution of the convective boundary lay er over the very flat terrain of central Illinois. Scientific goals in clude measurement of fluxes of heat, moisture, and momentum; vertical velocity statistics; study of entrainment and boundary layer height; a nd observation of organized coherent structures. The data collected wi ll also be used to evaluate the performance of these new lidars and co mpare measurements of velocity and boundary layer height to those obta ined from nearby radar wind profilers. LIFT was a companion to the Fla tland96 experiment, described by Angevine et al.