Investigation of near-global daytime boundary layer height using high-resolution radiosondes: first results and comparison with ERA5, MERRA-2, JRA-55, and NCEP-2 reanalyses

Guo, Jianping; Zhang, Jian; Yang, Kun; Liao, Hong; Zhang, Shaodong; Huang, Kaiming; Lv, Yanmin; Shao, Jia; Yu, Tao; Tong, Bing; Li, Jian; Su, Tianning; Yim, Steve H. L.; Stoffelen, Ad; Zhai, Panmao; Xu, Xiaofeng

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17079-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17079-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17079-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 22

Research article

|

24 Nov 2021

Research article |

| 24 Nov 2021

Investigation of near-global daytime boundary layer height using high-resolution radiosondes: first results and comparison with ERA5, MERRA-2, JRA-55, and NCEP-2 reanalyses

Jianping Guo, Jian Zhang, Kun Yang, Hong Liao, Shaodong Zhang, Kaiming Huang, Yanmin Lv, Jia Shao, Tao Yu, Bing Tong, Jian Li, Tianning Su, Steve H. L. Yim, Ad Stoffelen, Panmao Zhai, and Xiaofeng Xu

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17079-2021-supplement

Data sets

radiosonde data NOAA https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/us-radiosonde-bufr/archive/

radiosonde data Deutscher Wetterdienst (Climate Data Center) https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/CDC/observations_germany/radiosondes/high_resolution/historical/

radiosonde data GRUAN ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/gruan/processing/level2/RS92-GDP/version-002/

ERA5 data ECWMF https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=form

MERRA-2 data GMAO https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?keywords=MERRA-2&page=1

NECEP-2 data NCAR https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html

30 arcsec digital evaluation height (DEM) data NASA https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/

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Short summary

The planetary boundary layer (PBL) is the lowest part of the troposphere, and boundary layer height (BLH) is the depth of the PBL and is of critical importance to the dispersion of air pollution. The study presents the first near-global BLH climatology by using high-resolution (5-10 m) radiosonde measurements. The variations in BLH exhibit large spatial and temporal dependence, with a peak at 17:00 local solar time. The most promising reanalysis product is ERA-5 in terms of modeling BLH.