Assessment of Trends and Uncertainties in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Height Estimated Using Radiosounding Observations over Europe
Open Access
- 25 February 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by MDPI AG in Atmosphere
- Vol. 12 (3), 301
- https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12030301
Abstract
Trends in atmospheric boundary layer height may represent an indication of climate changes. The related modified interaction between the surface and free atmosphere affects both thermodynamics variables and dilution of chemical constituents. Boundary layer is also a major player in various feedback mechanisms of interest for climate models. This paper investigates trends in the nocturnal and convective boundary layer height at mid-latitudes in Europe using radiosounding profiles from the Integrated Global Radiosounding Archive (IGRA). Atmospheric data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ReAnalysis v5 (ERA5) and from the GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) Lindenberg station are used as intercomparison datasets for the study of structural and parametric uncertainties in the trend analysis. Trends are calculated after the removal of the lag-1 autocorrelation term for each time series. The study confirms the large differences reported in literature between the boundary layer height estimates obtained with the two different algorithms used for IGRA and ERA5 data: ERA5 shows a density distribution with median values of 350 m and 1150 m for the night and the daytime data, respectively, while the corresponding IGRA median values are of 1150 m and 1750 m. An overall good agreement between the estimated trends is found for nighttime data, while daytime ERA5 boundary layer height estimates over Europe are characterized by a lower spatial homogeneity than IGRA. Parametric uncertainties due to missing data in both the time and space domain are also investigated: the former is not exceeding 1.5 m, while the latter are within 10 m during night and 17 m during the day. Recommendations on dataset filtering based on time series completeness are provided. Finally, the comparison between the Lindenberg data as processed at high-resolution by GRUAN and as provided to IGRA at a lower resolution, shows the significant impact of using high-resolution data in the determination of the boundary layer height, with differences from about 200 m to 450 m for both night and day, as well as a large deviation in the estimated trend.Funding Information
- European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service implemented by ECMWF. (Contract C3S_311a_Lot3)
This publication has 34 references indexed in Scilit:
- A Planetary Boundary Layer Height Climatology Derived from ECMWF Reanalysis DataJournal of Climate, 2013
- The ERA‐Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation systemQuarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2011
- Observed Diurnal Cycle Climatology of Planetary Boundary Layer HeightJournal of Climate, 2010
- A Modeling and Observational Framework for Diagnosing Local Land–Atmosphere Coupling on Diurnal Time ScalesJournal of Hydrometeorology, 2009
- Hemispheric sunspot numbers ${R_{n}}$ and ${R_{s}}$ from 1945–2004: catalogue and N-S asymmetry analysis for solar cycles 18–23Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2006
- Review and intercomparison of operational methods for the determination of the mixing heightAtmospheric Environment, 2000
- Factors affecting the detection of trends: Statistical considerations and applications to environmental dataJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 1998
- Review: the atmospheric boundary layerEarth-Science Reviews, 1994
- Geometric consistency for regression model estimation and testing in climatology and meteorologyAtmosphere-Ocean, 1989
- Algorithm 478: Solution of an Overdetermined System of Equations in the l1 Norm [F4]Communications of the ACM, 1974