The real characteristics of the MFAS sodar industrially produced by Scintec AG (Germany) are given. The paper presents a wider range of altitudes as compared with the papers published before as a result of using the meteorological mast with the height of 310 m and longer duration of practically continuous testing embracing different weather conditions in the period from July to November 2008. During the comparison, the 10-min averaging time for the wind speed and direction is used. The comparison of the data of acoustic sounding and contact measurement methods indicates that the sodar provides reliable information on the vertical profiles of average wind speed within the considered altitude range up to 300 m except the cases of heavy rainfalls and low wind speed.

The turbulence characteristics measured in the surface layer over a real underlying surface are presented. The measurements are carried out at the 3-and 16-m levels using acoustic anemometers; at the lower level, the measurements are doubled. The diurnal cycle is obtained of the temperature flux and friction velocity. To obtain the temperature flux, so-called "acoustic" temperature is used as calculated from the sound speed data with corrections for air humidity and pressure. The normalized characteristics of turbulence are presented as dependent on dimensionless height z/L. The values of temperature flux and friction velocity increase with height: their day-integral values at 16-m level exceed those at 3-m level for about 20 and 35%, respectively.

Experimental field and laboratory studies on washout of radionuclides from the snow cover during snow melting were carried out in the winter of 2005/06. In the field studies, a specially equipped runoff site was used. In the laboratory conditions, the experiments were conducted using prepared soil monoliths. In the winter of 2006, 25 g/m 2 of water-free cesium chloride (CsCl) and 25 g/m 3 of strontium chloride (SrCl 2 ) were put onto the snow cover surface of the runoff site. The snow surface of the soil monolith was coated with a 137 Cs-bearing solution, then with SrCl 2 . Under experimental conditions, practically no surface runoff from the runoff site was recorded. The experiments with the soil monoliths demonstrated that the coefficient of the liquid washout of 137 Cs normalized to the runoff layer was within 0.9´10 -6 -1.2´10 -4 mm -1 , and that of 90 Sr normalized to the runoff layer was within 2´10 -6 -1.6´10 -4 mm -1 .

In this paper, intercomparison testings of the Wind Master sonic anemometer manufactured by Gill Instruments Ltd. (U.K.) and two sonic anemometers manufactured by the Taifun Scientific Industrial Association (Obninsk, Russia), ATsAT-3M are described. Data of measurements of the standard deviations and spectrum characteristics of the vertical and horizontal wind speed components, heat and friction fluxes are presented. Dispersion of the measurements and degree of their coherence are characterized by the regression equation coefficients (a and b) and the cross-correlation coefficients. The coherence plot shows compliance of the measurements data throughout the entire frequency range.

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