Email: lenschow@ucar.edu
Phone: 303-497-8903
Postal Address: P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO, 80307-3000
Shipping Address: 3450 Mitchell Lane, Boulder, CO, 80307-3000

Professional Interests

Dr. Lenschow conducts research on both the clear and cloud-capped planetary boundary layer. He has devoted considerable effort to collecting and analyzing turbulence data from both airborne and ground-based field deployments. An example is the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Marine Stratocumulus (DYCOMS-II), conducted off the California coast in July 2001, where this picture caught him deep in thought planning a mission on the NCAR C-130 aircraft (i.e. daydreaming).

Research Accomplishments and Links to Selected Publications

Dr. Lenschow has published papers on infrared and short wave radiation measurements, turbulence measurements, mesoscale phenomena, air mass modification processes, boundary layer dynamics, measurements of ozone fluxes and the ozone budget in the boundary layer, mean and flux profiles of trace reactive species in the surface layer, aircraft response to air motions, airborne instrumentation (wet and dry bulb thermometers, air motion sensing equipment, airborne radiation sensors and lidars), errors in measurement, and attenuation of scalar fluctuations in sampling tubes.

He is familiar with many different types of meteorological instrumentation, having conducted many wind tunnel tests of meteorological instrumentation. Don has done programming in many areas of data processing, including filtering routines, calculation of meteorological variables from instrumentation outputs, removing bad data points and inertial-barometric loops for vertical velocity calculations. He has worked with and modified numerical models for boundary layer growth in a clear and in a cloud-topped mixed layer.

Dr. Lenschow has conducted several field research programs, including AMTEX, a Great Lakes field experiment, several experiments involving the Haswell, Colorado tower (jointly with NOAA), and a joint aircraft-tower experiment involving the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory. He has participated in the National Hail Research Experiment (NHRE), in several mountain lee wave programs, in several California stratus experiments, in the Severe Environmental Storm and Mesoscale Experiment (SESAME), in the Clear Air Atmospheric Boundary Layer Experiment (CABLE), in the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Marine Stratocumulus (DYCOMS), in the First International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Regional Experiment (FIRE), and the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (ASTEX), and Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE--1).

Don has been funded to provide advice and analyze data from the NASA Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchange Project (STEP) and Amazon Boundary Layer Experiment (ABLE).

Publication Highlights

Lothon, M., D.H. Lenschow, D. Leon, and G. Vali, 2004: Turbulence measurements in marine stratocumulus with airborne Doppler radar. Submitted to Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. PDF available

Faloona, I., D. Lenschow, T. Campos, B. Stevens, M. van Zanten, B. Blomquist, D. Thornton, A. Bandy, and H. Gerber, 2003: Observations of Entrainment in Eastern Pacific Marine Stratocumulus Using Three Conserved Scalars. Submitted. PDF available


Stevens, B. and D.H. Lenschow, 2001: Observations, experiments and large-eddy simulations. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 82(2), 283--294. PDF available

Mengesha, Y.G., P.A. Taylor, and D.H. Lenschow, 2001: Boundary-layer turbulence over the Nebraska sandhills. Boundary-Layer Meteorol., 100, 3--46.

Muschinski, A. and D.H. Lenschow, 2001: Future directions for research on meter- and submeter-scale atmospheric turbulence. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 82, 2831--2843.

Mahrt, L., D. Vickers, R. Nakamura, M.R. Soler, J. Sun, S. Burns and D.H. Lenschow, 2001: Shallow drainage flows. Boundary-Layer Meteorol., 101, 243--260.

Sun, J., D.H. Lenschow, S.P. Burns, and 11 other authors, 2002: Atmospheric
disturbances that generate intermittent turbulence in nocturnal boundary
layers. Boundary-Layer Meteorol., 110, 255-279.

Sun, J., S.P. Burns, A.C. Delany, S.P. Oncley, T.W. Horst, and D.H. Lenschow, 2002: Heat balance in nocturnal boundary layers. J. Appl. Meteor., submitted.

Thornton, D.C., A.R. Bandy, F.H. Tu, B.W. Blomquist, G.M. Mitchell, W. Nadler and D.H. Lenschow, 2002: Fast airborne sulfur dioxide measurements by atmospheric pressure ionization mass spectrometry (APIMS), J. Geophys. Res., 107(D22), 4632, doi:10.1029/2002JD002289.

Sullivan, P.P., T.W. Horst, D.H. Lenschow, C.-H. Moeng, and J.C. Weil, 2003: Structure and modeling of the subfilter scale motions with application to large-eddy simulation modeling. J. Fluid Mech., 482, 101-139. PDF available

Stevens, B., D.H. Lenschow, and 30 other coauthors, 2002: Dynamics and Chemistry of Marine Stratocumulus. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 579--593. PDF available

Bandy, A.R., D.C. Thornton, F.H. Tu, B.W. Blomquist, W. Nadler, G.M. Mitchell, and D.H. Lenschow, 2002: Determination of the vertical flux of dimethyl sulfide by eddy correlation and atmospheric pressure ionization mass spectrometry (APIMS), J. Geophys. Res., 107(024), 4743, doi:10.1029/2002JD002472.

Sun, J., D.H. Lenschow, S.P. Burns, and other authors, 2002: Intermittent turbulence in the CASES-99 stable boundary layer and the processes that generate it. Submitted to Boundary-Layer Meteorol.

Lenschow, D.H., and D. Gurarie, 2003: A simple model for relating concentrations and fluctuations of trace reactive species to their residence time in the atmosphere, J. Geophys. Res., 107(D24), 4805, doi:10.1029/2002JD002526. PDF available

Stevens, B, D.H. Lenschow, I. Faloona, C.-H. Moeng, D.K. Lilly, B. Blomquist, G. Vali, A. Bandy, T. Campos, H. Gerber, S. Haimov, B. Morley, and D. Thornton, 2003: On entrainment rates in nocturnal marine stratocumulus. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 129, 3469--3493.PDF available

Hutterli, M.A., J.R. McConnell, G. Chen, R.C. Bales, D. Davis, and D.H. Lenschow, 2004: Formaldehyde and hydrogen peroxide in air, snow and interstitial air at South Pole. Atmospheric Environment, 38, 5439--5450. PDF available

Recent Publications

To search my complete list of publications, please see The NESL Publications Search.

Faloona, I., Conley, S. A., Blomquist, B., Clarke, A. D., Kapustin, V., Howell, S., Lenschow, D. H., Bandy, A. R., 2010: Sulfur dioxide in the tropical marine boundary layer: Dry deposition and heterogeneous oxidation observed during the Pacific Atmospheric Sulfur Experiment. Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry, doi: 10.1007/s10874-010-9155-0.

Kristensen, L., Lenschow, D. H., Gurarie, D., Jensen, N. O., 2010: A simple model for vertical transport of reactive species in the convective atmospheric boundary layer. Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 135, doi: 10.1007/s10546-010-9473-4, 181-183.

Ban, J., Gao, Z., Lenschow, D. H., 2010: Climate simulations with a new air-sea turbulent flux parameterization in the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model (CAM3). Journal of Geophysical Research, 115, doi: 10.1029/2009JD012802.

Conley, S. A., Faloona, I., Miller, G. H., Lenschow, D. H., Blomquist, B., Bandy, A., 2009: Closing the dimethyl sulfide budget in the tropical marine boundary layer during the Pacific Atmospheric Sulfur Experiment. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 9, doi: 10.5194/acp-9-8745-2009, 8745-8756.

Sun, J., Oncley, S. P., Burns, S. P., Stephens, B. B., Lenschow, D. H., Campos, T., Monson, R. K., Schimel, D. S., Sacks, W. J., De Wekker, S., Lai, C., Lamb, B., Ojima, D., Ellsworth, P., Sternberg, S. L., Zhong, S., Clements, C., Moore, D. J. P., Anderson, D. E., Watt, A., Hu, J., Tschudi, M., Aulenbach, S. M., Allwine, E., Coons, T., 2009: A multi-scale and multi-disciplinary investigation of ecosystem-atmosphere CO2 exchange over the Rocky mountains of Colorado. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, doi: 10.1175/2009BAMS2733.1.

Burns, S. P., Sun, J., Lenschow, D. H., Oncley, S. P., Stephens, B. B., Yi, C., Anderson, D. E., Hu, J., Monson, R. K., 2009: Atmospheric stability effects on wind profiles and scalar mixing within and just above a subalpine forest. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. (Submitted).

Zhou, M., Zhang, Z., Zhong, S., Lenschow, D. H., Hsu, H., Yao, W., Sun, B., Gao, Z., Li, S., Bian, X., Wang, Q., 2009: Observations of near-surface wind and temperature structures and their variations with topography and latitude in East Antarctica. Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, doi: 10.1029/2008JD011611, D17115.

Lothon, M., Lenschow, D. H., Mayor, S. D., 2009: Doppler lidar measurements of vertical velocity spectra in the convective planetary boundary layer. Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 132, doi: 10.1007/s10546-009-9398-y, 205-226.

Gao, Z., Lenschow, D. H., He, Z., Zhou, M., 2009: Seasonal and diurnal variations in moisture, heat and CO2 fluxes over a typical steppe prairie in Inner Mongolia, China. Hydrology and Earth Systems Science, 13, 1-12.

Zhang, Z., Zhou, M., Zhong, S., Lenschow, D. H., Wang, Q., 2009: Parameterizations of daytime friction velocity, temperature scale, and upslope flow over gently inclined terrain in calm synoptic conditions. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 26, doi: 10.1007/s00376-009-0577, 577-584.

Selected Presentations


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