The year-round continuous remote sounding of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) by means of the Doppler acoustic radar (sodar) LATAN-3 has been performed at the Zvenigorod Scientific Station of the Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, since 2008. A visual analysis of sodar echograms for four years revealed a large number of wavelike patterns in the intensity field of a scattered sound signal. Similar patterns were occasionally identified before in sodar, radar, and lidar sounding data. These patterns in the form of quasi-periodic inclined stripes, or cat’s eyes, arise under stable stratification and significant vertical wind shears and result from the loss of the dynamic stability of the flow. In the foreign literature, these patterns, which we call internal gravity-shear waves, are often associated with Kelvin-Helmholtz waves. In the present paper, sodar echograms are classified according to the presence or absence of wavelike patterns, and a statistical analysis of the frequency of their occurrence by the year and season was performed. A relationship between the occurrence of the patterns and wind shear and between the wave length and amplitude was investigated. The criteria for the identification of gravity-shear waves, meteorological conditions of their excitation, and issues related to their observations were discussed.

Acoustic sounders (sodars) are the simplest and economically most effective devices for the ground-based remote sensing of the lower troposphere. Using sodars, a vast amount of knowledge about the...

Variations in the intensity of turbulence during wave activity in the stable atmospheric boundary layer over a homogeneous steppe surface have been analyzed. Eight wave activity episodes recorded...

Distributions of the velocity-field helicity in the atmospheric boundary layer have been obtained from acoustic sounding data. The helicity of large-scale motions (0.3–0.6 m/s²) exceeds (by an order of magnitude) its independently measured turbulent values, which are close to helicity averaged over the layer (0.02–0.12 m/s²). In the absence of strong convection, there is good correlation between helicity and wind velocity squared at upper sounding levels of 400 to 600 m.

Sodar investigations of the breeze circulation and vertical structure of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) were carried out in the coastal zone of the Black Sea for ten days in June 2015. The measurements were preformed at a stationary oceanographic platform located 450 m from the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula. Complex measurements of the ABL vertical structure were performed using the three-axis Doppler minisodar Latan-3m. Auxiliary measurements were provided by a temperature profiler and two automatic weather stations. During the campaign, the weather was mostly fair with a pronounced daily cycle. Characteristic features of breeze circulation in the studied area, primarily determined by the adjacent mountains, were revealed. Wave structures with amplitudes of up to 100 m were regularly observed by sodar over the sea surface. Various forms of Kelvin–Helmholtz billows, observed at the interface between the sea breeze and the return flow aloft, are described.

The structure and dynamic characteristics of the Kelvin–Helmholtz billows (KHB), observed with a sodar in the stable atmospheric boundary layer, are studied by means of composite analysis, which consists in the averaging of samples selected according to certain criteria. Using a specific kind of this method allowed the authors to obtain the fine structure of the perturbation velocity fields from the sodar data. The events of most pronounced KHB were visually selected from echograms of continuous sodar measurements in the Moscow region over 2008–10. The composite patterns of KHB have been constructed for a few cases of clear inclined–stripes echogram patterns to derive a typical finescale structure of billows and a spatial distribution of wind speed and shear within them. The interconnection between echo intensity and wind shear variations within such patterns is shown. The typical distributions of velocity perturbation within various forms of billows are found.