<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-2786</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Aircraft Sampling Representativeness for LASSO Domain Averages over the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) Site</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liang</surname>
<given-names>Jiakun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gustafson Jr.</surname>
<given-names>William I.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9927-1393</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Caulton</surname>
<given-names>Dana R.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Small Griswold</surname>
<given-names>Jennifer D.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4563-8596</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Atmospheric Sciences Department, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Honolulu, 96822, United States</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Science Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, 99354, United States</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Wyoming, Laramie, 82071, United States</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>19</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>28</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jiakun Liang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2786/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2786/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2786/egusphere-2026-2786.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2786/egusphere-2026-2786.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Aircraft observations are widely used to evaluate cloud simulations; however, their inherently localized sampling may not fully represent the domain-scale cloud properties resolved by large-eddy simulations (LES). This study quantifies how aircraft-like sampling strategies influence the representativeness of cloud water content (CWC) derived from LES output. Using LASSO simulations for the ARM Southern Great Plains site (SGP), we emulate aircraft trajectories by prescribing multiple horizontal flight patterns (circle, diagonal, straight, combo, and zigzag) and vertical profiles (flat, sine wave, staircase, and zigzag) under different speed categories. Results show that sampling geometry substantially influences the degree to which aircraft-like measurements capture the magnitude and variability of domain-scale CWC. Sampling representativeness depends jointly on flight speed and trajectory geometry. For the flat, sine wave, and staircase vertical profiles, increasing flight speed generally improves agreement with the layer-restricted domain mean by increasing sampling density and reducing sensitivity to localized heterogeneity. In contrast, the zigzag pattern does not show systematic improvement with speed because its phase-locked vertical&amp;ndash;horizontal coupling constrains effective spatial coverage. Cloud-boundary analysis further indicates the tendency to underestimate cloud-top height, while cloud-base height is more consistently captured, with higher speeds reducing both bias and variability. These findings establish a systematic framework for interpreting aircraft-based cloud measurements in the context of LES output and provide practical guidance for designing flight strategies that improve sampling representativeness in model&amp;ndash;observation comparisons.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="28"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>U.S. Department of Energy</funding-source>
<award-id>DE-SC0024161</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Pacific Northwest National Laboratory</funding-source>
<award-id>DE-AC05-76RL01830</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>Oak Ridge National Laboratory</funding-source>
<award-id>DE-AC05-00OR22725</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>