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dc.contributor.authorKankanala, Pavan Kumar Reddy
dc.date.accessioned2015-06-15T23:21:45Z
dc.date.available2015-06-15T23:21:45Z
dc.date.issued2007-12
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11122/5564
dc.descriptionThesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2007en_US
dc.description.abstractFairbanks, Alaska (64°49ʹ N, 147°52ʹ W) experiences strong temperature inversions which when combined with the low wind speeds prevailing during the winter cause serious air pollution problems. The SODAR (Sound Detection And Ranging) or acoustic sounder is a very useful instrument for studying the lower atmosphere as it can continuously and reliably measure the vertical profiles of wind speed and direction,vertical motions, turbulence and the thermal structure in the lower part of the troposphere. A Doppler sodar was operated from December 2005 to April 2006 at the National Weather Service site in Fairbanks. The wind observations from the sodar indicate that the majority of the winds during the winter months were from the North, Northeast or the East, which is in good agreement with the radiosonde measurements and the long term trends in the wind patterns over Fairbanks area. Case studies were carried out using the sodar data depicting drainage winds, low-level jets, formation and breakup of inversions and estimation of the mixing layer height.en_US
dc.description.tableofcontents1. Introduction -- 1.1. Climatic features in Fairbanks during winter -- 1.1.1. Temperature inversions -- 1.1.2. Valley winds and drainage winds -- 1.1.3. Urban heat island -- 1.1.4. Air pollution and ice fog -- 1.2. SODAR and its applications -- 1.2.1 Acoustic sounder observations at Fairbanks in the past -- 2. Theory and instrumentation 2.1. Estimation of Ct² -- 2.1.1. Scattering theory -- 2.1.2. Sodar equation -- 2.2. Wind speed and direction -- 2.3. Sodar installation and data acquisition -- 2..4. Sodar dataset and additional sources of data -- 2.5. Algorithm to detect strong layers of temperature inversion -- 3. Results and discussion -- 3.1. Results from the inversion detection algorithm -- 3.1.1. Diurnal variations in inversion characteristics -- 3.1.2. Effect of cloud cover on inversion characteristics -- 3.2. Wind observations from sodar data -- 3.3. Case studies from sodar observations -- 3.3.1. Drainage winds overflowing the stable layer of air beneath -- 3.3.2. Nocturnal jet associated with a temperature inversion -- 3.3.3. Destruction of an inversion due to forced mixing and increasing cloud cover -- 3.3.4. Estimation of the mixing layer height from the backscatter intensity -- 4. Conclusions and future work -- References.en_US
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.titleDoppler sodar observations of the winds and structure in the lower atmosphere over Fairbanks, Alaskaen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.degreemsen_US
dc.identifier.departmentAtmospheric Sciences Programen_US
refterms.dateFOA2020-03-05T10:00:45Z


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