Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Ben Balsley Research Group

The Balsley research group consists of two Senior Research Scientists, Ben B. Balsley (field campaigns organization and logistics, boundary layer research, proposal writing) and Rod Frehlich (lidar research, turbulence theory and measurements, instrument design, boundary layer research, turbulence forecasting, and data assimilation), one Professional Research Associate Michael L. Jensen (chief TLS operator, field-campaign logistics and management, TLS instrumentation, calibrations), and one Post-Doc Yannick Meillier (boundary layer research, data analysis, signal processing and calibrations).

After a long period of development and perfectionment of the CIRES TLS tehcnology of its associated turbulence packages, the group's focus is now geared toward fundamental research mostly in the field of atmospheric boundary layer reserach with the analysis and interpretation of the large and rich data sets collected during the CASES-99 (October 1999) and Pentagon shield (April 2004) field experiments. .

Because the TLS was mostly flown at night during these campaigns, research is essentially focussed on the Nocturnal Boundary Layer (NBL) with some opporutnity for the study for the evning and morning transition. Publications produced so far include but are not limited to studies of its dynamics (evolution, wave turbulence interactions, perturbing mechanisms), structure (stability, vertical extent, nocturnal jet), and turbulence properties (variability, statistical description, profiles).