Turbulent helium gas cell as a new paradigm of daily meteorological fluctuations?

We compare the spectral properties of long meteorological temperature records with laboratory measurements in small convection cells. Surprisingly, the atmospheric boundary layer sampled on a daily scale shares the statistical properties of temperature fluctuations in small-scale experiments. This fact can be explained by the hydrodynamical similarity between these seemingly very different systems. The results suggest that the dynamics of daily temperature fluctuations is determined by the soft turbulent state of the atmospheric boundary layer in continental climate.