MASS

MASS Campaign March '03 : 10-24 March 2003 Correlation of turbulent layer altitude with NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) critical inversion layer forecasts Brice-Olivier Demory (EPFL-ESO)

The forecasted vertical soundings above Paranal were recovered in real time during the campaign from the GFS forecast pages at the Air Resources Laboratory. A useful real time product is the Skew-T LogP Diagram. Hints about the graphs below: - Provided that GFS gives data by intervals of 3 hours, the "forecast rectangle" displayed on the graphs are plotted centered on the hour for which the forecast has been computed by the model. E.g.: for a forecast time set to 300UT, the rectangle will be displayed from 130UT up to 430UT. - When no particular CRITICAL inversion layer is forecasted, no rectangle is displayed. For a whole night, a note appears in the right bottom of the graph. - GFS data are missing for the night of the 19-20 UT. This is noted on the graph. Please remind that only the CRITICAL layers have been plotted !

-2003-03-17
-2003-03-18
-2003-03-19
-2003-03-20
-2003-03-21
-2003-03-22
-2003-03-23