The authors describe and present early results from the July–August 1996 Lidars in Flat Terrain (LIFT) experiment. LIFT was a boundary layer experiment that made use of recently developed Doppler, aerosol backscatter, and ozone lidars, along with radars and surface instrumentation, to study the structure and evolution of the convective boundary layer over the very flat terrain of central Illinois. Scientific goals include measurement of fluxes of heat, moisture, and momentum; vertical velocity statistics; study of entrainment and boundary layer height; and observation of organized coherent structures. The data collected will also be used to evaluate the performance of these new lidars and compare measurements of velocity and boundary layer height to those obtained from nearby radar wind profilers. LIFT was a companion to the Flatland96 experiment, described by Angevine et al.
*National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado.
+National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado.
#Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
@Current affiliation: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin.
&Current affiliation: LightWorks, LLC., Boulder, Colorado.
