Edge Detection Method for Determining Boundary Layer Height Based on Doppler Lidar

The top of the boundary layer, referred to as the planetary boundary layer height (BLH), is an important physical parameter in atmospheric numerical models, which has a critical role in atmospheric simulation, air pollution prevention, and climate prediction. The traditional methods for determining BLHs using Doppler lidar vertical velocity variance (sigma(2)(w)) can be classified into the variance and peak methods, which depend on atmospheric conditions due to their use of a single threshold, hence limiting their ability to estimate diurnal BLHs. Edge detection (ED) was later introduced in BLH estimation due to its ability to identify the 2D gradient of an image. A key step in ED is automatically identifying the edge of BLHs based on the peaks of the profile, hence avoiding the influence of extreme atmospheric conditions. Two cases in the diurnal cycle on 4 March 2019 and 8 July 2019 reveal that ED outperforms both the variance and peak methods in nighttime and extreme atmospheric conditions. The retrieved BLHs from 2018 to 2020 were compared with radiosonde (RS) measurements for the same time at the neutral, stable, and convective boundary layers. The correlation coefficient (R: 0.4 vs. 0.05, 0.14; 0.26 vs. -0.10, - 0.16; 0.35 vs. 0.01, 0.16) and root mean square error (RMSE (km): 0.58 vs. 0.82, 0.90; 0.37 vs. 1.01, 0.50; 0.66 vs. 0.98, 0.82) obtained by the ED method were higher and lower than those obtained by the variance and peak methods, respectively. The mean absolute error (MAE) of the ED method under the NBL, SBL, and CBL conditions are lower than the variance and peak methods (MAE (km): 0.44, 0.14, 0.50 vs. 0.62, 0.34, 0.64; 0.59, 0.75, 0.74), respectively. The mean relative error (MRE) of the ED method is lower than the variance and peak methods under the NBL condition (MRE: -8.88% vs. -18.39%, 13.91%). Under the SBL, the MRE of the ED method is lower than the variance method and higher than the peak method (-38.64%, vs. -152.23%; 14.02%). Under the CBL, the MRE of the ED method is lower than the variance method and higher than the peak method (15.07% vs. 2.24%; 5.64%). In addition, the comparison between ED and wavelet covariance transform (WCT) method and RS measurements showed that the ED method has a similar performance with the WCT method and is even better. In the long-term analysis, the hourly and monthly BLHs in the diurnal and annual cycles, respectively, as obtained by ED, were highly consistent with the RS measurements and obtained the lowest standard error. In the annual cycle, the retrieved BLHs in summer and autumn were higher than those retrieved in spring and winter.

Automated summary

The boundary layer height (BLH) is a critical parameter in atmospheric numerical models, and the edge detection (ED) method outperforms traditional methods in nighttime and extreme atmospheric conditions by automatically identifying the edges of BLHs. By avoiding the influence of extreme atmospheric conditions, the ED method provides more accurate BLH estimates.