Can recurrence quantification analysis be useful in the interpretation
of airborne turbulence measurements?
Abstract
In airborne or model data, 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, i.e.
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 variables in dynamic systems, namely Recurrence Plot
(RP) and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA). By studying RP’s
constructed with turbulence kinetic energy, vertical velocity and
temperature fluctuations and quantifying appropriate time series of
laminarity (LAM) calculated using the plots, we distinguish between
turbulent and non-turbulent segments along a horizontal flight leg.