Former Post-Doc Eric Beamesderfer’s paper, “The role of surface energy fluxes in determining mixing layer heights,” has just been published in the AFM special issue on land-atmosphere interactions. Eric’s study used continuous point-based ceilometer- and radiosonde-derived measurements of MLH at surface flux tower sites to identify the surface influence on MLH dynamics. Mean MLH was the highest at all sites during the summer, while the highest annual mean MLH was found at the warm and dry sites, dominated by high sensible heat fluxes. At daily time scales, surface fluxes of sensible heat, latent heat, and vapor pressure deficit had the largest influence on afternoon MLH. These results highlight the difficulty in using single-point observations to explain MLH dynamics but should encourage the use of ceilometers or similar atmospheric measurements at surface flux sites in future studies.
