The work reported here describes the environmental impact of emitting about 1000 MW of dry heat from a concentrated source into the atmosphere. It is based on a large field program conducted jointly by the Centre de Recherches Atmosphériques and Electricité de France. This program provided an opportunity to evaluate the actual environmental impacts of large-scale heat release and to obtain data required to develop parameterization schemes for use in modeling heat releases by intense sources such as dry cooling towers. The heat source is an array of 105 fuel-oil burners distributed over 15 000 m2. An aerial assemblage suspended at two levels (25 and 50 m) over the burner array has been used to collect data (temperature and velocity fields) for analyzing aspects of both the mean and the turbulent components of the flow near the heat source. The flow field near the heat source comprises a cold downdraft upwind zone which supplies the burner area with ambient air, a convective zone containing a hot v... Abstract The work reported here describes the environmental impact of emitting about 1000 MW of dry heat from a concentrated source into the atmosphere. It is based on a large field program conducted jointly by the Centre de Recherches Atmosphériques and Electricité de France. This program provided an opportunity to evaluate the actual environmental impacts of large-scale heat release and to obtain data required to develop parameterization schemes for use in modeling heat releases by intense sources such as dry cooling towers. The heat source is an array of 105 fuel-oil burners distributed over 15 000 m2. An aerial assemblage suspended at two levels (25 and 50 m) over the burner array has been used to collect data (temperature and velocity fields) for analyzing aspects of both the mean and the turbulent components of the flow near the heat source. The flow field near the heat source comprises a cold downdraft upwind zone which supplies the burner area with ambient air, a convective zone containing a hot v...