SCALE PROPERTIES OF MICROSCALE CONVECTION IN THE MARINE SURFACE-LAYER

We analyze the scale distribution of coherent water vapor structures i n the marine atmospheric boundary layer as measured by a shipboard Ram an lidar during the Combined Sensor Program (March 1996) using a two-d imensional continuous wavelet transform. Coherent structures in the li dar measured water vapor concentration field correspond to locations w here covariance with the wavelet is a local extremum. Scales of the si gnificant structures are identified using a filtered wavelet variance (detection density) derived from 24 ''images'' in a horizontal plane. A dominant radius of 14 m is identified using complimentary approaches to the analysis.