ARL Weekly News – July 13, 2018

FRD
The manuscript “Distinct Turbulence Structures in Stably Stratified Boundary Layers with Weak and Strong Surface Shear” with Heping Liu from Washington State University as lead author and Dennis Finn as a coauthor received highly favorable reviews in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. It examines turbulent structures and flux exchanges in the stably stratified atmospheric boundary layer using in part observations from FRD’s measurement network at the Idaho National Laboratory. A unifying model of different turbulence regimes is proposed for the stable boundary layer. The journal editors consider the manuscript to be significant enough that they want to use one of the figures on the journal cover and also plan on highlighting it in Eos, the earth and space science news published by the American Geophysical Union.

HQ
On 12 July, Winston Luke provided an overview of ARL and a tour of the chemistry laboratory to student interns working at the National Center for Environmental Prediction. The group consisted of undergraduate and graduate students from colleges and universities around the country.

Winston Luke has participated in a number of planning discussions and conference calls with officials from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9, U.S. Geological Survey, National Atmospheric Deposition Program, and Hawaii Department of Health to deploy additional mercury analyzers at various locations around the island of Hawaii. Eruptions, outgassing, and ash release from the Kilauea volcano continue unabated on the island, and ARL hopes to collaborate with federal and Hawaii state agencies to measure atmospheric mercury and facilitate precipitation collection for analysis of mercury and other trace metals, as well as major ions (notably sulfate) arising from the volcanic activity. These measurements will be used to assess the impact of the eruptions on human and ecosystem health on the Big Island.