Impact of Low-Level Jets on the Nocturnal Urban Heat Island Intensity in Oklahoma City

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (8) ◽  
pp. 1779-1802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Ming Hu ◽  
Petra M. Klein ◽  
Ming Xue ◽  
Julie K. Lundquist ◽  
Fuqing Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Vertical Mixing ◽  
Atmospheric Stability ◽  
Nocturnal Boundary Layer ◽  
Oklahoma City ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Urban Heat ◽  
Low Level Jets

AbstractPrevious analysis of Oklahoma City (OKC), Oklahoma, temperature data indicated that urban heat islands (UHIs) frequently formed at night and the observed UHI intensity was variable (1°–4°C). The current study focuses on identifying meteorological phenomena that contributed to the variability of nocturnal UHI intensity in OKC during July 2003. Two episodes, one with a strong UHI signature and one with a weak signature, were studied in detail using observations along with simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Mechanical mixing associated with low-level jets (LLJs) played a critical role in moderating the nocturnal UHI intensity. During nights with weak LLJs or in the absence of LLJs, vertical mixing weakened at night and strong temperature inversions developed in the rural surface layer as a result of radiative cooling. The shallow stable boundary layer (SBL < 200 m) observed under such conditions was strongly altered inside the city because rougher and warmer surface characteristics caused vertical mixing that eroded the near-surface inversion. Accordingly, temperatures measured within the urban canopy layer at night were consistently higher than at nearby rural sites of comparable height (by ~3°–4°C). During nights with strong LLJs, however, the jets facilitated enhanced turbulent mixing in the nocturnal boundary layer. As a consequence, atmospheric stability was much weaker and urban effects played a much less prominent role in altering the SBL structure; therefore, UHI intensities were smaller (<1°C) during strong LLJs. The finding that rural inversion strength can serve as an indicator for UHI intensity highlights that the structure of the nocturnal boundary layer is important for UHI assessments.

Pollutant vertical mixing in the nocturnal boundary layer enhanced by density currents and low-level jets: two representative case studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 174 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mireia Udina ◽  
Maria Rosa Soler ◽  
Miriam Olid ◽  
Bernat Jiménez-Esteve ◽  
Joan Bech
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Vertical Mixing ◽  
Nocturnal Boundary Layer ◽  
Density Currents ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Low Level Jets

scholarly journals Impact of the vertical mixing induced by low-level jets on boundary layer ozone concentration

2013 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 123-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Ming Hu ◽  
Petra M. Klein ◽  
Ming Xue ◽  
Fuqing Zhang ◽  
David C. Doughty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Ozone Concentration ◽  
Vertical Mixing ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Low Level Jets ◽  
Boundary Layer Ozone

scholarly journals Low Level Jets in the Pantanal Wetland Nocturnal Boundary Layer – Case Studies

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hardiney S. Martins ◽  
Leonardo D. A. Sá ◽  
Osvaldo L. L. Moraes
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Nocturnal Boundary Layer ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Low Level Jets ◽  
Pantanal Wetland

The Very Stable Boundary Layer on Nights with Weak Low-Level Jets

2007 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 3068-3090 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Banta ◽  
Larry Mahrt ◽  
Dean Vickers ◽  
Jielun Sun ◽  
Ben B. Balsley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Stable Boundary Layer ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Density Currents ◽  
Lower Boundary Condition ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Stable Boundary ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Low Level Jets

Abstract The light-wind, clear-sky, very stable boundary layer (vSBL) is characterized by large values of bulk Richardson number. The light winds produce weak shear, turbulence, and mixing, and resulting strong temperature gradients near the surface. Here five nights with weak-wind, very stable boundary layers during the Cooperative Atmosphere–Surface Exchange Study (CASES-99) are investigated. Although the winds were light and variable near the surface, Doppler lidar profiles of wind speed often indicated persistent profile shapes and magnitudes for periods of an hour or more, sometimes exhibiting jetlike maxima. The near-surface structure of the boundary layer (BL) on the five nights all showed characteristics typical of the vSBL. These characteristics included a shallow traditional BL only 10–30 m deep with weak intermittent turbulence within the strong surface-based radiation inversion. Above this shallow BL sat a layer of very weak turbulence and negligible turbulent mixing. The focus of this paper is on the effects of this quiescent layer just above the shallow BL, and the impacts of this quiescent layer on turbulent transport and numerical modeling. High-frequency time series of temperature T on a 60-m tower showed that 1) the amplitudes of the T fluctuations were dramatically suppressed at levels above 30 m in contrast to the relatively larger intermittent T fluctuations in the shallow BL below, and 2) the temperature at 40- to 60-m height was nearly constant for several hours, indicating that the very cold air near the surface was not being mixed upward to those levels. The presence of this quiescent layer indicates that the atmosphere above the shallow BL was isolated and detached both from the surface and from the shallow BL. Although some of the nights studied had modestly stronger winds and traveling disturbances (density currents, gravity waves, shear instabilities), these disturbances seemed to pass through the region without having much effect on either the SBL structure or on the atmosphere–surface decoupling. The decoupling suggests that under very stable conditions, the surface-layer lower boundary condition for numerical weather prediction models should act to decouple and isolate the surface from the atmosphere, for example, as a free-slip, thermally insulated layer. A multiday time series of ozone from an air quality campaign in Tennessee, which exhibited nocturnal behavior typical of polluted air, showed the disappearance of ozone on weak low-level jets (LLJ) nights. This behavior is consistent with the two-stratum structure of the vSBL, and with the nearly complete isolation of the surface and the shallow BL from the rest of the atmosphere above, in contrast to cases with stronger LLJs, where such coupling was stronger.

scholarly journals Observations of the Nocturnal Boundary Layer Associated with the West African Monsoon

2010 ◽  
Vol 138 (8) ◽  
pp. 3142-3156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline L. Bain ◽  
Douglas J. Parker ◽  
Christopher M. Taylor ◽  
Laurent Kergoat ◽  
Françoise Guichard
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Surface Wind ◽  
West African Monsoon ◽  
Moisture Flux ◽  
Nocturnal Boundary Layer ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Strong Inversion

Abstract A set of nighttime tethered balloon and kite measurements from the central Sahel (15.2°N, 1.3°W) in August 2005 were acquired and analyzed. A composite of all the nights’ data was produced using boundary layer height to normalize measured altitudes. The observations showed some typical characteristics of nocturnal boundary layer development, notably a strong inversion after sunset and the formation of a low-level nocturnal jet later in the night. On most nights, the sampled jet did not change direction significantly during the night. The boundary layer thermodynamic structure displayed some variations from one night to the next. This was investigated using two contrasting case studies from the period. In one of these case studies (18 August 2005), the low-level wind direction changed significantly during the night. This change was captured well by two large-scale models, suggesting that the large-scale dynamics had a significant impact on boundary layer winds on this night. For both case studies, the models tended to underestimate near-surface wind speeds during the night, which is a feature that may lead to an underestimation of moisture flux northward by models.

scholarly journals Analysis of Urban Effects in Oklahoma City using a Dense Surface Observing Network

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 723-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Ming Hu ◽  
Ming Xue ◽  
Petra M. Klein ◽  
Bradley G. Illston ◽  
Sheng Chen
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Central Business District ◽  
Temperature Inversion ◽  
Oklahoma City ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Business District

AbstractMany studies have investigated urban heat island (UHI) intensity for cities around the world, which is normally quantified as the temperature difference between urban location(s) and rural location(s). A few open questions still remain regarding the UHI, such as the spatial distribution of UHI intensity, temporal (including diurnal and seasonal) variation of UHI intensity, and the UHI formation mechanism. A dense network of atmospheric monitoring sites, known as the Oklahoma City (OKC) Micronet (OKCNET), was deployed in 2008 across the OKC metropolitan area. This study analyzes data from OKCNET in 2009 and 2010 to investigate OKC UHI at a subcity spatial scale for the first time. The UHI intensity exhibited large spatial variations over OKC. During both daytime and nighttime, the strongest UHI intensity is mostly confined around the central business district where land surface roughness is the highest in the OKC metropolitan area. These results do not support the roughness warming theory to explain the air temperature UHI in OKC. The UHI intensity of OKC increased prominently around the early evening transition (EET) and stayed at a fairly constant level throughout the night. The physical processes during the EET play a critical role in determining the nocturnal UHI intensity. The near-surface rural temperature inversion strength was a good indicator for nocturnal UHI intensity. As a consequence of the relatively weak near-surface rural inversion, the strongest nocturnal UHI in OKC was less likely to occur in summer. Other meteorological factors (e.g., wind speed and cloud) can affect the stability/depth of the nighttime boundary layer and can thus modulate nocturnal UHI intensity.

Role of low-level jets and boundary-layer properties on the NBL budget technique

2005 ◽  
Vol 135 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 35-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Mathieu ◽  
I.B. Strachan ◽  
M.Y. Leclerc ◽  
A. Karipot ◽  
E. Pattey
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Low Level Jets

scholarly journals Dome effect of black carbon and its key influencing factors: A one-dimensional modelling study

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilin Wang ◽  
Xin Huang ◽  
Aijun Ding
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Black Carbon ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Aerosol Layer ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Haze Pollution ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Black carbon (BC) has been identified to play a critical role in aerosol-planet boundary layer (PBL) interaction and further deterioration of near-surface air pollution in megacities, which has been named as its dome effect. However, the impacts of key factors that influence this effect, such as the vertical distribution and aging processes of BC, and also the underlying land surface, have not been quantitatively explored yet. Here, based on available in-situ measurements of meteorology and atmospheric aerosols together with the meteorology-chemistry online coupled model, WRF-Chem, we conduct a set of parallel simulations to quantify the roles of these factors in influencing the BC's dome effect and surface haze pollution, and discuss the main implications of the results to air pollution mitigation in China. We found that the impact of BC on PBL is very sensitive to the altitude of aerosol layer. The upper level BC, especially those near the capping inversion, is more essential in suppressing the PBL height and weakening the turbulence mixing. The dome effect of BC tends to be significantly intensified as BC aerosol mixed with scattering aerosols during winter haze events, resulting in a decrease of PBL height by more than 25 %. In addition, the dome effect is more substantial (up to 15 %) in rural areas than that in the urban areas with the same BC loading, indicating an unexpected regional impact of such kind of effect to air quality in countryside. This study suggests that China's regional air pollution would greatly benefit from BC emission reductions, especially those from the elevated sources from the chimneys and also the domestic combustions in rural areas, through weakening the aerosol-boundary layer interactions that triggered by BC.

scholarly journals The Cessation of Continuous Turbulence as Precursor of the Very Stable Nocturnal Boundary Layer

2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (11) ◽  
pp. 3097-3115 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. H. Van de Wiel ◽  
A. F. Moene ◽  
H. J. J. Jonker
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Nocturnal Boundary Layer ◽  
Surface Heat ◽  
Heat Extraction ◽  
Local Similarity ◽  
Temporary Reduction ◽  
Turbulent Friction ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Flow Acceleration

Abstract The mechanism behind the collapse of turbulence in the evening as a precursor to the onset of the very stable boundary layer is investigated. To this end a cooled, pressure-driven flow is investigated by means of a local similarity model. Simulations reveal a temporary collapse of turbulence whenever the surface heat extraction, expressed in its nondimensional form h/L, exceeds a critical value. As any temporary reduction of turbulent friction is followed by flow acceleration, the long-term state is unconditionally turbulent. In contrast, the temporary cessation of turbulence, which may actually last for several hours in the nocturnal boundary layer, can be understood from the fact that the time scale for boundary layer diffusion is much smaller than the time scale for flow acceleration. This limits the available momentum that can be used for downward heat transport. In case the surface heat extraction exceeds the so-called maximum sustainable heat flux (MSHF), the near-surface inversion rapidly increases. Finally, turbulent activity is largely suppressed by the intense density stratification that supports the emergence of a different, calmer boundary layer regime.

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