Scale properties of microscale convection in the marine surface layer

We analyze the scale distribution of coherent water vapor structures in the marine atmospheric boundary layer as measured by a shipboard Raman lidar during the Combined Sensor Program (March 1996) using a two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform. Coherent structures in the lidar measured water vapor concentration field correspond to locations where covariance with the wavelet is a local extremum. Scales of the significant structures are identified using a filtered wavelet variance (detection density) derived from 24 “images” in a horizontal plane. A dominant radius of 14 m is identified using complimentary approaches to the analysis.

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