Profiles of turbulent dissipation rate from expedition ARTofMELT, Arctic Ocean, 2023

Ian Brooks, Heather Guy

Vertical profiles of turbulent dissipation rate from the surface to 3000 m derived from measurements of Doppler vertical velocity from multiple instruments: a Doppler cloud radar, Doppler lidar, and sonic anemometers on both the foremast and a mast on the ice.

The dissipation rate provides a proxy for turbulence intensity, with a value of 0.00005 providing an effective threshold between turbulent and non-turbulent conditions. The vertical profiles of dissipation rate allow an assessment of the extent of vertical mixing within the atmospheric boundary layer.

Dissipation rate estimates are calculated at 1-minute intervals, and at the native measurement altitudes of the individual instruments.

Data was collected during the ARTofMELT 2023 expedition with Swedish icebreaker Oden in the Fram Strait pack ice during the spring transition (8 May to 14 June) of 2023.

AtmosphereObservationsDissipation rateTurbulenceLidarRadarSonic anemometerArcticArctic oceanARTofMELT 2023 expeditionIcebreaker Oden

Name

Version

Citation

References

Brooks I, Guy H (2026) HALO lidar vertical stare data from expedition ARTofMELT, Arctic Ocean, 2023.Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-artofmelt-2023-halo-lidar-1

Guy H, Brooks I, Murto S, Karalis M, Tjernström M (2024) Ice station micrometeorological data from expedition ARTofMELT, Arctic Ocean, 2023. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-artofmelt-2023-micrometeorology-ice-station-1

Guy H, Brooks I, Murto S, Tjernström M, Karalis M, Prytherch J (2024) Cloud radar data from expedition ARTofMELT, Arctic Ocean, 2023. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-artofmelt-2023-cloud-radar-1

Murto S, Tjernström M, Brooks I, Guy H, Karalis M, Vihma T, Urbancic G, Prytherch J (2024) Radiosonde profiles from expedition ARTofMELT, Arctic Ocean, 2023. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-artofmelt-2023-radiosonde-1

O’Connor EJ, Illingworth AJ, Brooks IM, Westbrook CD, Hogan RJ, Davies F, Brooks BJ (2010) A Method for Estimating the Turbulent Kinetic Energy Dissipation Rate from a Vertically Pointing Doppler Lidar, and Independent Evaluation from Balloon-Borne In Situ Measurements. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 27:1652–1664. https://doi.org/10.1175/2010jtecha1455.1

Prytherch J, Brooks I, Guy H, Karalis M, Murto S, Tjernström M (2024) Micrometeorological data from icebreaker Oden’s foremast during expedition ARTofMELT, Arctic Ocean, 2023. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-artofmelt-2023-micromet-oden-1

Shupe MD, Brooks IM, Canut G (2012) Evaluation of turbulent dissipation rate retrievals from Doppler Cloud Radar. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques 5:1375–1385. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-5-1375-2012

Data description

The data are provided as a set of 36 netCDF (nc) files. Total size: 120 MB.

They are named

all_dissipation_rate_Oden_YYYYMMDD.nc

where the date is included in the filename.

Primary variables

• time seconds since 00:00:00 01-01-1970 [time]
• doy decimal day of year (in UTC) [time]
• year year [time]
• month month of the year [time]
• day day of the month [time]
• hour hour of the day (in UTC) [time]
• minute minutes of the hour [time]
• second seconds of the minute [time]
• height height above surface (m) [height]
• epsilon turbulent dissipation rate (m2 s-3) [time,height]
• fractional_error uncertainty in the dissipation rate estimate () [time,height]

Comments

Measurement system

The dissipation rate profiles are a composite of estimates from four different instruments:

• RPG-FMCW-96-SP Doppler cloud radar (72-3000 m)(range gates > 11);
• HALO Streamline Doppler lidar (49-72 m)(range gates 3-10);
• sonic anemometer on Oden foremast (20.5 m)(range gate 2);
• sonic anemometer on a mast on the sea ice (4 m)(range gate 1).

Data gaps result where there were insufficient cloud or aerosol particles to provide radar or lidar backscatter above their noise thresholds. The lidar estimates are used only below the lowest range gate of the cloud radar. The on-ice sonic anemometer is only available during ice camps.

The dissipation rates are estimated at 1-minute intervals. The estimates from the sonic anemometers are direct estimates calculated from the power spectral energy density of the turbulent vertical velocity measurements, using the portion of the spectrum between 0.2 and 2 Hz (within the intertial subrange). The lidar and radar estimates are retrievals based on the Doppler vertical velocity variances over the 1-minute averaging interval, following O’Connor et al. (2010) and Shupe et al. (2012). The wind speeds required by the retrieval are derived from interpolation of wind speed profile from 6-hourly radiosondes (Murto et al. 2024).

Related datasets

• Doppler cloud radar measurements (Guy, Brooks, Murto, Tjernström et al. 2024)
• Doppler lidar measurements (Brooks & Guy 2026)
• Data from sonic anemometers on the foremast (Prytherch et al. 2024)
• Data from sonic anemometers on a mast on the ice (Guy, Brooks, Murto, Karalis et al. 2024)

Data creators

• Ian Brooks: principle investigator, operator, and data set creator
• Heather Guy: operator

The expedition

Data were collected during the ARTofMELT 2023 expedition on board the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was organized by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat from 8 May through 14 June, 2023.

Project

ARtofMELT 2023 expedition. The project ARTofMELT was funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR: 2022-03052). University of Leeds contribution was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (grant: NE/X000087/1). The HALO lidar was provided by the Atmospheric Measurement and Observation Facility (AMOF) of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), a Natural Environment Research Council (UKRI-NERC) funded facility.

Publisher

Bolin Centre Database

License

Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0

First name

Ian

Last name or organisation

Brooks

Email address

i.m.brooks@leeds.ac.uk

Address

School of Earth and Environment; University of Leeds

Postal code

LS2 9JT

City

Leeds

Country

United Kingdom

GCMD science keyword

Earth science > Atmosphere

GCMD location

Ocean > Arctic Ocean

Dataset language

English

Begin date

2023-05-10

End date

2023-06-12

DOI

Time