MASS

MASS Campaign September '03 : 16-29 September 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. The method is described in report by B. O. Demory, Turbulent Layers and Thermal Inversion.

Here we use not only the 'CRITICAL' layers but also we introduce the notion of 'ACTIVE' layers. It was noticed that layers defined as non-critical by the model but showing a strong thermal gradient (dT/dz > 0.004 K/m) could be associated to MASS layers.

The summary of the September 2003 campaign is available as text file. All available gfs records (txt) are zipped here.