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Updated: Jul 12, 2025

Simultaneous Measurement of Turbulence and Particle Kinematics Using Flow Imaging Techniques
Published on: March 12, 2019
Tethered Balloon-Borne Turbulence Measurements in Winter and Spring during the MOSAiC Expedition
Elisa F Akansu1, Holger Siebert2, Sandro Dahlke3
1Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Leipzig, Germany. akansu@tropos.de.
Abstract:
During the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate expedition, a tethered balloon system was operated with a turbulence probe attached to study the lower troposphere in the high Arctic. Overall, measurements were conducted on 34 days between December 2019 and May 2020, resulting in 47 quality-assured sampling records consisting of vertical profiles and constant-altitude measurements. The continuous profiles extend from the surface, i.e., the sea ice floe, to a height of several hundred meters typically. The high-resolution wind velocity measurements using a hot-wire anemometer and temperature measurements using a thermocouple provide a comprehensive basis for examining the dynamical processes and thermodynamic stratification in the Arctic atmospheric boundary layer under cloudless and cloudy conditions. This paper provides a detailed technical description of the turbulence payload, including calibration and quality assurance, and a general overview of the data. A particular focus of this work is the estimation of local energy dissipation rates. The data are freely available from the World Data Center PANGAEA.

