Never at rest: the air over Los Angeles
- Visualizations by:
- Trent L. Schindler
- View full credits
This visualization shows the output of a high-resolution model of the atmosphere over Los Angeles (courtesy Meemong Lee and Zhijin Li, NASA/JPL). The model is based on meteorological measurements for one month in the spring of 2010 at a resolution of 1 km and 3 hours. Vertical motion of the Earth's Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) - the lowest part of the atmosphere that hugs the surface of the Earth - is represented by the gray "blanket". The height of the PBL is largely driven by convection associated with the changing surface temperature of the Earth (for example, rising during the day and sinking at night). The colored arrows represent the strength and direction of winds at different altitudes. The Megacities Carbon Project includes measurements and models of PBL dynamics and winds to help interpret measurements of greenhouse gas abundances at different locations around the basin. Measurement systems include wind speed and direction indicators and laser detection and ranging (lidar) instruments to track the changing PBL height.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Animators
- Trent L. Schindler (USRA) [Lead]
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
Scientist
- Riley Duren (NASA/JPL CalTech)
Producer
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
Datasets used in this visualization
Megacities Project PBL (A.K.A. Megacities Project Planetary Boundary Layer Height Data)
Calibrated instrument data and retrieved mixing layer heights from the MiniMicroPulse Lidar (MiniMPL) and Ceilometer at Caltech.
Dataset can be found at: https://megacities.jpl.nasa.gov/portal/
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