Can Recurrence Quantification Analysis Be Useful in the Interpretation of Airborne Turbulence Measurements?

In airborne data or model outputs, clouds are often defined using information about Liquid Water Content (LWC). Unfortunately LWC is not enough to retrieve information about the dynamical boundary of the cloud, that is, volume of turbulent air around the cloud. In this work, we propose an algorithmic approach to this problem based on a method used in time series analysis of dynamical systems, namely Recurrence Plot (RP) and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA). We construct RPs using time series of turbulence kinetic energy, vertical velocity and temperature fluctuations as variables important for cloud dynamics. Then, by studying time series of laminarity (LAM), a variable which is calculated using RPs, we distinguish between turbulent and non-turbulent segments along a horizontal flight leg. By selecting a single threshold of this quantity, we are able to reduce the number of subjective variables and their thresholds used in the definition of the dynamical cloud boundary.

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