Ship-board Flux Measurements made during CalNex 2010

Air-Sea flux measurements were made from the research vessel Atlantis during the California Air Quality Study (CalNex 2010) off the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco (Fig. 1). Measurements included sensible and latent heat fluxes in conjunction with long and short-wave incoming solar radiation, total precipitable and liquid water, remote sensing of the clouds, and thermodynamic and wind profiles from radiosonde launches to capture the boundary layer structure. As can be seen in Fig. 1 a diverse and complicated set of data were collected in such regions as the harbors of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the Sacramento ship channel, coastal transects, and the open ocean. These measurements combined with the large suite of air chemistry measurements being made on the Atlantis as well as the many land-base sites will attempt to provide a detailed picture of the emissions, chemical processes, transport, and meteorology as they relate to California’s air quality and climate assessment. These data will be carefully analyzed to sort out the influence of the land, ocean, micro-climates, and the continually changing air-sea temperature differences on the boundary layer. Measurements from a W-band cloud radar will be used to better understand the cloud forcing in addition to providing comparisons with several aircraft overpasses and satellite observations.