BOUNDARY-LAYER EXPERIMENT 1996 (BLX96)

The University of Wyoming King Air aircraft was the primary instrument platform for turbulence measurements in the bottom half of the convec tive boundary layer during 15 July-13 August 1996. A total of 12 succe ssful research flights were made, each of about 4.5-h duration. Crossw ind (east-west) flight patterns were flown in Oklahoma and Kansas over three sites of different land use: forest, pasture, and crops. Measur ements of mean values, turbulent deviations, and turbulent fluxes of t emperature, moisture, and momentum were made to test theories of conve ctive transport, the radix layer, and cumulus potential. Additional po rtions of each flight included slant soundings and near-surface horizo ntal flights in order to determine mixed layer (ML) scaling variables such as ML depth z(i), Deardorff velocity w(.), and buoyancy velocity w(B). While the ML was shallower and the ground wetter than anticipate d based on climatology, a high-quality dataset was obtained.