DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4290254
title: Fiber-optic Distributed Temperature Sensing and Wind Profiler Data during the Shallow Cold Pool Experiment

description: The Shallow Cold Pool (SCP) experiment was an Integrated Surface Flux System (ISFS) deployment conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheres (CEOAS), the Department of Biological & Ecological Engineering (BEE), and the Center for Transformative Environmental Monitoring Programs (CTEMPS) of Oregon State University, in a shallow gully within the Pawnee Grasslands, Coloradp, USA. The primary goal of SCP was to examine the formation and maintenance of common shallow cold pools. These cold pools had not been previously examined with turbulence measurements and very little was known about their dynamics and interaction with gravity waves and other submesoscale motions. SCP consisted of a dense network of ultrasonic anemometers with 19 units being installed at 1m above ground level (agl) and 8 being mounted at different heights on a 20m high tower. In addition, air temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentrations measurements were taken. This data can be found on https://data.eol.ucar.edu/project/SCP. The unique observational technique featured in SCP was a cross-valley transect of the innovative active and passive fiber-optic distributed sensing technique (FODS) using a Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) unit (Model Ultima SR, Silixa, London, UK) as well as a ground-based acoustic wind profiler (SODAR, PCS2000-24, Metek GmbH, Elmshorn, Germany) in addition to the classical sonic anemometer network. The data archived in this submission publishes the FODS data and contains data for nine (9) nights between 16th November until 27th November between the hours of 19:00 and 05:00 MST (Local time). Details of the FODS setup are contained in Pfister et al. (2019) and Sayde et al. (2015).<br> The fiber-optic cross-valley transect was 240m long and stretched from the North to the South shoulder of the gully and contained FODS observations at three heights (0.5m, 1m, 2m agl). By combining passive and active FODS, air temperatures and wind speeds were measured spatially continuously with a temporal and spatial resolution of 5s and 25cm, respectively. Air temperatures were measured with an unheated white-PVC jacketed optical glass fiber cable with an outer diameter of 0.9mm, while for the wind speed measurements an additional actively heated stainless-steel uncoated fiber-optic cable (1.3mm outer diameter) was deployed. Wind speeds were derived from the difference between the heated and unheated fiber-optic pair similar to a hotwire anemometer (Sayde et al. 2015).<br> The acoustic wind profiler (Sound Detection and Ranging, SODAR) was installed at the gully bottom about 200m down the gully from the fiber-optic transect (between station A18 and A19) and measured with a 5-min resolution, a 10-m gate range, and 17000 Hz, see map in Pfister et al. (2019). The observational range was between 10m to 320m agl. The data provided is the cluster data output of the wind profiler, which is quality-controlled by the internal data processing software. The published data include horizontal wind speed (speed), wind direction (direction), unrotated along-wind component (u_unrot), unrotated cross-wind component (v_unrot), and unrotated vertical-wind component (w_unrot). By combining the fiber-optic distributed sensing, the sensor network, and the wind profiler, we were able to investigate specific class of submeso-scale motions in detail. The submeso-scale motion occurred frequently during SCP, significantly impacted air temperature, wind speed and direction, as well as the near-surface turbulence within less than a few minutes. These motions are not described or categorized by existing boundary layer regimes or concepts. Consequently, further research on submeso-scale motions using continuous FODS measurements is necessary to better understand the stable boundary layer. Pfister, L., Sayde, C., Selker, J., Mahrt, L., & Thomas, C. K. (2019). Classifying the Nocturnal Atmospheric Boundary Layer into Temperature and Flow Regimes. <em>Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc.</em>, <em>145</em>(721), 1515–1534. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3508 Sayde, C., Thomas, C. K., Wagner, J., & Selker, J. S. (2015). High-resolution wind speed measurements using actively heated fiber optics. <em>Geophys. Res. Lett.</em>, <em>42</em>(22), 10,064–10,073. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL066729
description: This project received support from awards AGS-1115011, AGS-1614345, and AGS-0955444 by the National Science Foundation and contracts W911NF-10-1-0361 and W911NF-09-1-0271 by the Army Research Office. We acknowledge the Earth Observing Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research for collecting the sonic anemometer measurements for the Shallow Cold Pool experiment.