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Abstract. A primary objective of the 1995 and 1996 Flatland boundary layer experiments, known as Flatland95 and Flatland96, was to measure and characterize entrainment at the top of the convective boundary layer. The experiments took place in the area near the Flatland Atmospheric Observatory near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in August-September 1995 and June-August 1996. The site is interesting because it is extraordinarily flat, has uniform land use, and is situated in a prime agricultural area. Measurements in the entrainment zone are difficult to make due to the time and space scales involved. We will present entrainment estimates derived from budget calculations with data from UHF wind profiling radars and from radiosondes. The results demonstrate that the remote sensing instruments produce results comparable to radiosondes and have significant advantages for boundary layer studies. Surface flux measurements are also used in the calculations. Direct heating by shortwave radiation absorbed by aerosols in the boundary layer is found to be an important component of the boundary layer heat budgets. The entrainment virtual temperature flux and the ratio of entrainment to surface flux found from the budget calculations are somewhat larger than expected. Advection of warm air, which is not accounted for in the budget calculations, is probably a factor in some periods but may not be significant in the full data set. For the full data set, the mean entrainment velocity found from the heat budget is 0.03 + 0.01 m s -l, slightly less than the mean rate of change of the boundary layer height. The mean entrainment ratio A R is 0.51 + 0.12 and the median is 0.43, comparable to results from some other studies in comparable conditions.

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A simplified theory has been developed for calculating the effect of satellite potential on the ion current measured by an experiment such as an ion mass spectrometer or an ion trap. The theory is based on the use of a spherically symmetric Debye potential distribution in the sheath around the satellite and is particularly appropriate for use in regions where the Debye length is large, such as in the plasmasphere and magnetosphere. Ion data obtained from the ion trap on the Ogo 3 satellite during a pass through the plasmasphere show excellent agreement with the theory. The inferred ion densities from this analysis are as much as 1 order of magnitude different from what would be inferred from previous analyses.