Abstract. Due to the major role of the sun in heating the earth's surface, the atmospheric planetary boundary layer over land is inherently marked by a diurnal cycle. The afternoon transition, the period of the day that connects the daytime dry convective boundary layer to the night-time stable boundary layer, still has a number of unanswered scientific questions. This phase of the diurnal cycle is challenging from both modelling and observational perspectives: it is transitory, most of the forcings are small or null and the turbulence regime changes from fully convective, close to homogeneous and isotropic, toward a more heterogeneous and intermittent state.These issues motivated the BLLAST (Boundary-Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence) field campaign that was conducted from 14 June to 8 July 2011 in southern France, in an area of complex and heterogeneous terrain. A wide range of instrumented platforms including full-size aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft systems, remote-sensing instruments, radiosoundings, tethered balloons, surface flux stations and various meteorological towers were deployed over different surface types. The boundary layer, from the earth's surface to the free troposphere, was probed during the entire day, with a focus and intense observation periods that were conducted from midday until sunset. The BLLAST field campaign also provided an opportunity to test innovative measurement systems, such as new miniaturized sensors, and a new technique for frequent radiosoundings of the low troposphere.Twelve fair weather days displaying various meteorological conditions were extensively documented during the field experiment. The boundary-layer growth varied from one day to another depending on many contributions including stability, advection, subsidence, the state of the previous day's residual layer, as well as local, meso-or synoptic scale conditions.Ground-based measurements combined with tetheredballoon and airborne observations captured the turbulence decay from the surface throughout the whole boundary layer and documented the evolution of the turbulence characteristic length scales during the transition period.Closely integrated with the field experiment, numerical studies are now underway with a complete hierarchy of models to support the data interpretation and improve the model representations.

Abstract. Due to the major role of the sun in heating the earth's surface, the atmospheric planetary boundary layer over land is inherently marked by a diurnal cycle. The afternoon transition, the period of the day that connects the daytime dry convective to the night-time stable boundary layer, still raises several scientific issues. This phase of the diurnal cycle is challenging from both modeling and observational perspectives: it is transitory, most of the forcings are small or null and the turbulence regime changes from fully convective regime, close to homogeneous and isotropic, toward a more heterogeneous and intermittent state. These issues motivated the BLLAST (Boundary Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence) field campaign that was conducted from 14 June to 8 July 2011 in southern France, in an area of complex and heterogeneous terrain. A wide range of integrated instrument platforms including full-size aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), remote sensing instruments, radiosoundings, tethered balloons, surface flux stations, and various meteorological towers were deployed over different surface types. The boundary layer, from the earth's surface to the free troposphere, was probed during the entire day, with a focus and intense observations from midday until sunset. The BLLAST field campaign also provided an opportunity to test innovative measurement systems, like new miniaturized sensors, and a new technique for frequent radiosoundings of the low troposphere. Twelve fair weather days displaying various meteorological conditions were extensively documented during the field experiment. The boundary layer growth varied from one day to another depending on many contributions including stability, advection, subsidence, the state of the residual layer of the previous day, as well as local, meso- or synoptic scale conditions. Ground-based measurements combined with tethered-balloon and airborne observations captured the turbulence decay from the surface throughout the whole boundary layer and evidenced the evolution of the turbulence characteristic lengthscales during the transition period. Closely integrated with the field experiment, numerical studies are now underway with a complete hierarchy of models to support the data interpretation and improve the model representations.

No abstract

In this study, we delineate the combined consequences of finite channel aspect ratios, wall slip effects and steric interactions on the energy transfer mechanisms in narrow fluidic confinements. By considering the details of ionic interactions within the electrical double layer, we demonstrate that considerations of finite aspect ratios and steric effects may result in dramatic alterations in the predictions of effective viscosity as well as the energy transfer efficiency, particularly for high magnitudes of the surface charge density, as compared with the predictions based on parallel plate channel considerations. We also illustrate the possibilities of obtaining very high energy transfer efficiencies by employing channels of aspect ratios close to unity, with a judicious exploitation of steric interactions and wall slippage effects in highly confined geometries.

Abstract. The effect of terrain heterogeneities in one-point measurements is a continuous subject of discussion. Here we focus on the order of magnitude of the advection term in the equation of the evolution of temperature as generated by documented terrain heterogeneities and we estimate its importance as a term in the surface energy budget (SEB), for which the turbulent fluxes are computed using the eddycorrelation method. The heterogeneities are estimated from satellite and model fields for scales near 1 km or broader, while the smaller scales are estimated through direct measurements with remotely piloted aircraft and thermal cameras and also by high-resolution modelling. The variability of the surface temperature fields is not found to decrease clearly with increasing resolution, and consequently the advection term becomes more important as the scales become finer. The advection term provides non-significant values to the SEB at scales larger than a few kilometres. In contrast, surface heterogeneities at the metre scale yield large values of the advection, which are probably only significant in the first centimetres above the ground. The motions that seem to contribute significantly to the advection term in the SEB equation in our case are roughly those around the hectometre scales.