Empirical evidence for frontal modifications of atmospheric boundary layer depth variability over land. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Despite many observational studies on the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) depth zi variability across various time scales (e.g., diurnal, seasonal, annual, and decadal), zi variability before, during, and after frontal passages over land, or simply zi variability as a function of weather patterns, has remained relatively unexplored. In this study, we provide an empirical framework using 5 years (2014–18) of daytime rawinsonde observations and surface analyses over 18 central and southeastern U.S. sites to report zi variability across frontal boundaries. By providing systematic observations of front-relative contrasts in zi (i.e., zi differences between warm and cold sectors, Δ z i = Warm − Cold ) and boundary layer moisture (i.e., ABL-q) regimes in summer and winter, we propose a new paradigm to study zi changes across cold-frontal boundaries. For most cases, we found deeper zi over the warm sector than the cold sector in both summer and winter, although with significant site-to-site variability in Δzi. Additionally, our results show a positive ΔqABL (i.e., frontal contrasts in ABL-q) in summer and winter, supporting what is typically observed in midlatitude cyclones. We found that a front-relative ΔqABL of 1 g kg−1 often yielded at least a 100-m Δzi across the frontal boundary in both summer and winter. This work provides a synoptic-scale basis for zi variability and establishes a foundation for model verification to examine the impact of airmass exchange associated with advection on zi. This work will advance our understanding of ABL processes in synoptic environments and help unravel sources of front-relative zi variability.