Estimate of the Arctic Convective Boundary Layer Height from Lidar Observations: A Case Study

Table 1

Comparison between the advantages and drawbacks of the three approaches to determinate the PBL height.

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Lidar-based gradient method	High vertical resolution Continuous measurements Opportunity to observe aerosol layers	Lack of overlap at low altitudes sets a lower limit for PBL height determination; Needs well-mixed aerosol. Problems of interpretation with advected layers
Radiosonde-based LR and RB methods	Large dataset over the world since radiosondes are routinely operated Can be used also in adverse meteorological conditions	Determination of the PBL height only in coincidences of the balloon launch; In case of stable PBL methods based on potential temperature are not applicable (or reliable)
Batchvarova and Gryning model	Provides continuous estimate of the PBL height; Employs only ground based measurements	Good results only under convective regimes and clear sky conditions; Estimate of initialization values and uncertainties on estimates of parameters; Turbulent flux measurements are required; Many approximations in the physics of PBL processes make the estimate subject to large uncertainties