Cascade-like and scaling behavior of wind velocity increments in the atmospheric surface layer

By using a large amount of data collected in the atmospheric surface layer, we analyze the probability density functions (PDFs), the probability of return and the moments of wind velocity increments. Results show that the PDFs change from the non-Gaussian long-tailed distributions to Gaussian with the increase of time scales. This is similar to what has been observed and interpreted as an indication of cascade in the fully developed homogeneous and isotropic turbulence. Besides, both the probability of return and the moments are found to be scaling with time scales. We then compare above results with the truncated Lévy flights and the log-normal PDF model. It is found that although both models show the cascade-like behavior in the PDFs and the scaling behavior in the probability of return and the moments under some conditions, they are not good enough for quantitatively describing the random process of wind velocity increments.