Large-eddy Observatory, Voitsumra Experiment 2019 (LOVE19)

The weak-wind Stable Boundary Layer (wwSBL) is poorly described by theory and breaks basic assumptions necessary for observations of turbulence. Understanding the wwSBL requires distributed observations capable of separating between submeso and turbulent scales. To this end, we present the Large Eddy Observatory, Voitsumra Experiment 2019 (LOVE19) which featured 1350m of fiber optic distributed sensing of air temperature and wind speed, as well as an experimental wind direction method, at scales as fine as 1s and 0.127m, in addition to a suite of point observations of turbulence and ground-based remote sensing. Additionally, flights with a fiber optic cable attached to a tethered balloon provide an unprecedented detailed view of the boundary layer structure with a resolution of 0.254m and 10s between 1-200m height.

We anticipate that these data will be of interest to boundary layer researchers, but also may be applicable to other communities that study the exchange between the atmosphere and the surface. The novelty of the DTS data, supported by additional observations, hopefully allows the investigation of research questions that could not be adequately addressed before.

A pdf detailing the experiment documentation (LOVE19_AE-Documentation.pdf) is provided to give an overview of the experiment and data in addition to a submitted (and hopefully future) Earth System Science Data (ESSD) manuscript. The AE-Documentation is volume 65 of the Arbeitsergebnisse, Universität Bayreuth, Mikrometeorologie publication series.

All data are provided as self-describing netcdfs. Two example scripts (as python-based Jupyter Notebooks) are provided, reconstructing the example figures from the ESSD paper.  The examples demonstrate the unique capabilities of the LOVE19 data for examining boundary layer processes: 1) FODS observations between 1m and ~200m height during a period of gravity waves propagating across the entire boundary layer and 2) tracking a near-surface, transient submeso structure that causes an intermittent burst of turbulence.