Evaluation of methods for estimating atmospheric stability at two coastal sites

Abstract

Understanding the atmospheric stability conditions is important in order to obtain accurate estimates of the vertical wind speed profile. This work compares and evaluates common methods for estimation of atmospheric stability using standard meteorological mast observations. Atmospheric stability distributions from three different met-masts located at two coastal sites are calculated and compared. The atmospheric stability parameter, L is estimated using the bulk Richardson number, the surface-layer Richardson number, and calculated directly from eddy covariance flux measurements. The resulting distributions vary depending on which method is used. The atmospheric stability measurements from two masts located 3 km apart in similar terrain are compared directly. The highest correlation is found for the surface-layer Richardson number method. This method it also less sensitive to variation of measurement heights than the bulk Richardson number method.