scholarly journals Global Circulation in an Axially Symmetric Shallow-Water Model, Forced by Off-Equatorial Differential Heating

2010 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 1275-1286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ori Adam ◽  
Nathan Paldor

Abstract An axially symmetric inviscid shallow-water model (SWM) on the rotating Earth forced by off-equatorial steady differential heating is employed to characterize the main features of the upper branch of an ideal Hadley circulation. The steady-state solutions are derived and analyzed and their relevance to asymptotic temporal evolution of the circulation is established by comparing them to numerically derived time-dependent solutions at long times. The main novel feature of the steady-state solutions of the present theory is the existence of a tropical region, associated with the rising branch of the Hadley circulation, which extends to about half the combined width of the Hadley cells in the two hemispheres and is dominated by strong vertical advection of momentum. The solutions in this tropical region are characterized by three conditions: (i) the meridional temperature gradient is very weak but drastically increases outside of the region, (ii) moderate easterlies exist only inside this region and they peak off the equator, and (iii) angular momentum is not conserved there. The momentum fluxes of the new solutions at the tropics differ qualitatively from those of existing nearly inviscid theories and the new flux estimates are in better agreement with both observations and axially symmetric simulations. As in previous nearly inviscid theories, the steady solutions of the new theory are determined by a thermal Rossby number and by the latitude of maximal heating.

2009 ◽  
Vol 619 ◽  
pp. 367-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. K. BIRMAN ◽  
E. MEIBURG ◽  
B. KNELLER

Field observations indicate that the height of submarine levees decays with distance from the channel either exponentially or according to a power law. This investigation clarifies the flow conditions that lead to these respective shapes, via a shallow water model for the overflow currents that govern the levee formation. The model is based on a steady state balance of sediment supply by the turbidity current, and sediment deposition onto the levee, with the settling velocity and the entrainment rate appearing as parameters. It demonstrates that entrainment of ambient fluid is the determining factor for the levee shape. For negligible entrainment rates, levee shapes tend to exhibit exponential profiles, while constant rates of entrainment or detrainment result in power law shapes. Interestingly, whether a levee has an exponential or a power law shape is determined by kinematic considerations only, viz. the balance laws for sediment mass and fluid volume. We find that the respective coefficients governing the exponential or power law decay depend on the settling speeds of the sediment grains, which in turn is a function of the grain size. Two-dimensional, unsteady Navier–Stokes simulations confirm the emergence of a quasi-steady state. The depositional behaviour of this quasi-steady state is consistent with the predictions of the shallow water model, thus validating the assumptions underlying the model, and demonstrating its predictive abilities.


2009 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 1418-1433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ori Adam ◽  
Nathan Paldor

Abstract Solutions of an axially symmetric inviscid shallow-water model (SWM) on the earth forced by equinoctial differential heating are constructed using numerical integration of the time-dependent equations and analysis of their steady states. The study also maps the physical initial conditions and parameter values for which the solutions approach steady states at long times, demonstrating strong dependence of the SWM on initial conditions. The model admits states of uniform angular momentum, including superrotation, in the tropics and radiative equilibrium at high latitudes. The asymptotic properties of the subtropical jets and tropical fluxes are explicitly calculated and it is shown that all solutions of the previously studied nearly inviscid theories are particular solutions of the present theory. The model’s results relate the location and intensity of the subtropical jet in the steady states to properties of the SWM on a sphere, such as the conservation of angular momentum. The exact form of the differential heating is secondary in determining these properties and its main role is to transform any initial state to the vicinity of the steady states. When mass is assumed to be supplied to the fluid from an underlying motionless layer (this model is termed the 1½-SWM), the angular momentum in the tropics is not uniform (so the local Rossby number is smaller than 1), the height of the tropopause is nearly uniform there, the steady states do not depend on the initial conditions, and the zonal velocity vanishes on the equator. Accurate and simple estimates that are determined only by the value of a thermal Rossby number are derived in this case for the location and intensity of the subtropical jet.


2013 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 284-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ori Adam ◽  
Nili Harnik

Abstract The interaction of midlatitude eddies and the thermally driven Hadley circulation is studied using an idealized shallow-water model on the rotating sphere. The contributions of the annually averaged differential heating, vertical advection of momentum from a stationary boundary layer, and the gross effect of eddies, parameterized by Rayleigh damping, including a hemispherically asymmetric damping, are examined at steady state. The study finds that the relative dominance of eddies, as quantified by the local Rossby number, is predicted by an effective macroturbulent Hadley circulation Prandtl number Pr. In addition, viscous solutions of the Hadley circulation width and strength, subtropical jet amplitude, and equator-to-pole temperature difference scale as deviations from the respective inviscid solutions. Semianalytic solutions for the steady circulation are derived in the limit of weak eddy dominance (small Pr) as deviations from the respective inviscid solutions. These solutions follow a three-region paradigm: weak temperature gradient at the ascending branch of the Hadley circulation, monotonically decreasing angular momentum at the descending branch, and modified radiative–convective equilibrium at the extratropics. Using the three-region solutions, scaling relations found in the full solutions are reproduced analytically. The weak eddy-dominance solutions diverge from the full solutions as Pr increases and may become invalid for Pr > 1 due to the breakdown of the three-region global circulation structure. The qualitative predictions of the response of the Hadley circulation to heating based on the weak eddy-dominance solutions and Pr are in agreement with the findings of more complex models and the observed atmosphere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (12) ◽  
pp. 124117
Author(s):  
M. W. Harris ◽  
F. J. Poulin ◽  
K. G. Lamb

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 2152
Author(s):  
Gonzalo García-Alén ◽  
Olalla García-Fonte ◽  
Luis Cea ◽  
Luís Pena ◽  
Jerónimo Puertas

2D models based on the shallow water equations are widely used in river hydraulics. However, these models can present deficiencies in those cases in which their intrinsic hypotheses are not fulfilled. One of these cases is in the presence of weirs. In this work we present an experimental dataset including 194 experiments in nine different weirs. The experimental data are compared to the numerical results obtained with a 2D shallow water model in order to quantify the discrepancies that exist due to the non-fulfillment of the hydrostatic pressure hypotheses. The experimental dataset presented can be used for the validation of other modelling approaches.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 2054
Author(s):  
Naoki Kuroda ◽  
Katsuhide Yokoyama ◽  
Tadaharu Ishikawa

Our group has studied the spatiotemporal variation of soil and water salinity in an artificial salt marsh along the Arakawa River estuary and developed a practical model for predicting soil salinity. The salinity of the salt marsh and the water level of a nearby channel were measured once a month for 13 consecutive months. The vertical profile of the soil salinity in the salt marsh was measured once monthly over the same period. A numerical flow simulation adopting the shallow water model faithfully reproduced the salinity variation in the salt marsh. Further, we developed a soil salinity model to estimate the soil salinity in a salt marsh in Arakawa River. The vertical distribution of the soil salinity in the salt marsh was uniform and changed at almost the same time. The hydraulic conductivity of the soil, moreover, was high. The uniform distribution of salinity and high hydraulic conductivity could be explained by the vertical and horizontal transport of salinity through channels burrowed in the soil by organisms. By combining the shallow water model and the soil salinity model, the soil salinity of the salt marsh was well reproduced. The above results suggest that a stable brackish ecotone can be created in an artificial salt marsh using our numerical model as a design tool.


2009 ◽  
Vol 137 (10) ◽  
pp. 3339-3350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramachandran D. Nair

Abstract A second-order diffusion scheme is developed for the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) global shallow-water model. The shallow-water equations are discretized on the cubed sphere tiled with quadrilateral elements relying on a nonorthogonal curvilinear coordinate system. In the viscous shallow-water model the diffusion terms (viscous fluxes) are approximated with two different approaches: 1) the element-wise localized discretization without considering the interelement contributions and 2) the discretization based on the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method. In the LDG formulation the advection–diffusion equation is solved as a first-order system. All of the curvature terms resulting from the cubed-sphere geometry are incorporated into the first-order system. The effectiveness of each diffusion scheme is studied using the standard shallow-water test cases. The approach of element-wise localized discretization of the diffusion term is easy to implement but found to be less effective, and with relatively high diffusion coefficients, it can adversely affect the solution. The shallow-water tests show that the LDG scheme converges monotonically and that the rate of convergence is dependent on the coefficient of diffusion. Also the LDG scheme successfully eliminates small-scale noise, and the simulated results are smooth and comparable to the reference solution.


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