Tethered Balloon-Borne Turbulence Measurements in Winter and Spring during the MOSAiC Expedition

• Published in: Scientific Data
• Main Authors: Elisa F. Akansu, Holger Siebert, Sandro Dahlke, Jürgen Graeser, Ralf Jaiser, Anja Sommerfeld
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Portfolio 2023
• Subjects: Science; Q; Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02582-5; https://doaj.org/article/8b597764f8474e6991ef5e3f06a6d77a

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.