scholarly journals Large-eddy simulation of radiation fog: Part 1: Impact of dynamics on microphysics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Mazoyer ◽  
Christine Lac ◽  
Odile Thouron ◽  
Thierry Bergot ◽  
Valery Masson ◽  
...  

Abstract. Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of a radiation fog event occurring during ParisFog experiment have been studied with a view of analyzing the impact of the dynamics on the microphysics. The LES, performed with the Meso-NH model at 5 m resolution horizontally and 1 m vertically, and with a 2-moment microphysical scheme, included the drag effect of a trees barrier and deposition on vegetation. The model shows a good agreement with the measurements of the near surface dynamic and thermodynamic parameters as well as the cloud water content, but overestimates the cloud droplet sizes and concentration. The blocking effect of the trees induced elevated fog formation, like in the observation, and horizontal heterogeneities, and limited the cooling and the cloud water production. The deposition process was found to exert the most significant impact on the fog prediction, as it not only erodes the fog near the surface, but also modifies the fog life cycle and induces vertical heterogeneities. The comparison with the 2 m horizontal resolution simulation exhibited small differences meaning that the grid convergence was achieved. Conversely, increasing numerical diffusion through a wind advection operator of lower order led to an overestimation of the near surface microphysical fields and had almost a similar effect than removing the effect of the trees barrier. This study allows to establish the major dynamical ingredients necessary to perform correctly the fog life cycle prediction at high resolution.

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (21) ◽  
pp. 13017-13035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Mazoyer ◽  
Christine Lac ◽  
Odile Thouron ◽  
Thierry Bergot ◽  
Valery Masson ◽  
...  

Abstract. Large eddy simulations (LESs) of a radiation fog event occurring during the ParisFog experiment are studied with a view to analyse the impact of the dynamics of the boundary layer on the fog life cycle. The LES, performed with the Meso-NH model at 5 m resolution horizontally and 1 m vertically, and with a 2-moment microphysical scheme, includes the drag effect of a tree barrier and the deposition of droplets on vegetation. The model shows good agreement with measurements of near-surface dynamic and thermodynamic parameters and liquid water path. The blocking effect of the trees induces elevated fog formation, as actually observed, and horizontal heterogeneities during the formation. It also limits cooling and cloud water production. Deposition is found to exert the most significant impact on fog prediction as it not only erodes the fog near the surface but also modifies the fog life cycle and induces vertical heterogeneities. A comparison with the 2 m horizontal resolution simulation reveals small differences, meaning that grid convergence is achieved. Conversely, increasing numerical diffusion through a wind advection operator of lower order leads to an increase in the liquid water path and has a very similar effect to removing the tree barrier. This study allows us to establish the major dynamical ingredients needed to accurately represent the fog life cycle at very high-resolution.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 17963-18019 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Rangognio ◽  
P. Tulet ◽  
T. Bergot ◽  
L. Gomes ◽  
O. Thouron ◽  
...  

Abstract. This paper assesses the impact of aerosol properties on the formation and the development of radiation fog. Simulations were performed using the Meso-NH meteorological model including the ORILAM aerosol scheme coupled with a two-moment microphysical cloud scheme (number concentration of cloud droplets and cloud water content). The activation scheme used was taken from the work of Abdul-Razzak and Ghan (2004). "Off-line" sensitivity analysis of CCN (Cloud Condensation Nuclei) activation was performed on number, median diameter and chemical compounds of aerosols. During this "off-line" study, the interactions with the other physical processes (e.g. radiative) were not taken into account since the cooling rate was imposed. Different regimes of CCN activation and a critical value of aerosol number concentration were found. This critical aerosol number corresponds to the maximum of activated cloud droplets for a given cooling rate and given aerosol chemical properties. As long as the aerosol number concentration is below this critical value, the cloud droplet number increases when the aerosol number increases. But when the aerosol number concentration exceeds this critical value, the cloud droplet number decreases when aerosol number increases. A sensitivity study on aerosol chemical composition showed that the CCN activation was limited in the case of hydrophilic aerosol composed of material with a solubility in the 10% range. An event observed during the ParisFOG field experiment was simulated. This case took place in the polluted sub-urban area of Paris (France) characterized by particle concentrations of 17 000 aerosols per cm3. 1D simulations successfully reproduced the observed temporal evolution of the fog layer. Beyond the initial fog formation at the surface, cloud droplet formation occurred at the top of the fog layer where the cooling rate was maximum, reaching more than −10 K h−1. These simulations confirm that the aerosol particle number concentration is a key parameter for the accurate prediction of the microphysical properties of a fog layer and also influences the vertical development of fog. The important of the interaction between microphysical and radiative processes is illustrated, showing how the life cycle of a fog layer is determined by the CCN number concentration and chemical properties.


2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 319-333
Author(s):  
Ian Boutle ◽  
Wayne Angevine ◽  
Jian-Wen Bao ◽  
Thierry Bergot ◽  
Ritthik Bhattacharya ◽  
...  

Abstract. An intercomparison between 10 single-column (SCM) and 5 large-eddy simulation (LES) models is presented for a radiation fog case study inspired by the Local and Non-local Fog Experiment (LANFEX) field campaign. Seven of the SCMs represent single-column equivalents of operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, whilst three are research-grade SCMs designed for fog simulation, and the LESs are designed to reproduce in the best manner currently possible the underlying physical processes governing fog formation. The LES model results are of variable quality and do not provide a consistent baseline against which to compare the NWP models, particularly under high aerosol or cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC) conditions. The main SCM bias appears to be toward the overdevelopment of fog, i.e. fog which is too thick, although the inter-model variability is large. In reality there is a subtle balance between water lost to the surface and water condensed into fog, and the ability of a model to accurately simulate this process strongly determines the quality of its forecast. Some NWP SCMs do not represent fundamental components of this process (e.g. cloud droplet sedimentation) and therefore are naturally hampered in their ability to deliver accurate simulations. Finally, we show that modelled fog development is as sensitive to the shape of the cloud droplet size distribution, a rarely studied or modified part of the microphysical parameterisation, as it is to the underlying aerosol or CDNC.


Időjárás ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-646
Author(s):  
Zita Ferenczi ◽  
Emese Homolya ◽  
Krisztina Lázár ◽  
Anita Tóth

An operational air quality forecasting model system has been developed and provides daily forecasts of ozone, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter for the area of Hungary and three big cites of the country (Budapest, Miskolc, and Pécs). The core of the model system is the CHIMERE off-line chemical transport model. The AROME numerical weather prediction model provides the gridded meteorological inputs for the chemical model calculations. The horizontal resolution of the AROME meteorological fields is consistent with the CHIMERE horizontal resolution. The individual forecasted concentrations for the following 2 days are displayed on a public website of the Hungarian Meteorological Service. It is essential to have a quantitative understanding of the uncertainty in model output arising from uncertainties in the input meteorological fields. The main aim of this research is to probe the response of an air quality model to its uncertain meteorological inputs. Ensembles are one method to explore how uncertainty in meteorology affects air pollution concentrations. During the past decades, meteorological ensemble modeling has received extensive research and operational interest because of its ability to better characterize forecast uncertainty. One such ensemble forecast system is the one of the AROME model, which has an 11-member ensemble where each member is perturbed by initial and lateral boundary conditions. In this work we focus on wintertime particulate matter concentrations, since this pollutant is extremely sensitive to near-surface mixing processes. Selecting a number of extreme air pollution situations we will show what the impact of the meteorological uncertainty is on the simulated concentration fields using AROME ensemble members.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert-Jan Steeneveld ◽  
Roosmarijn Knol

<p>Fog is a critical weather phenomenon for safety and operations in aviation. Unfortunately, the forecasting of radiation fog remains challenging due to the numerous physical processes that play a role and their complex interactions, in addition to the vertical and horizontal resolution of the numerical models. In this study we evaluate the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for a radiation fog event at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport (The Netherlands) and further develop the model towards a 100 m grid spacing. Hence we introduce high resolution land use and land elevation data. In addition we study the role of gravitational droplet settling, advection of TKE, top-down diffusion caused by strong radiative cooling at the fog top. Finally the impact of heat released by the terminal areas on the fog formation is studied. The model outcomes are evaluated against 1-min weather observations near multiple runways at the airport.</p><p>Overall we find the WRF model shows an reasonable timing of the fog onset and is well able to reproduce the visibility and meteorological conditions as observed during the case study. The model appears to be relatively insensitive to the activation of the individual physical processes. An increased spatial resolution to 100 m generally results in a better timing of the fog onset differences up to three hours, though not for all runways. The effect of the refined landuse dominates over the effect of refined elevation data. The modelled fog dissipation systematically occurs 3-4 h hours too early, regardless of physical processes or spatial resolution. Finally, the introduction of heat from terminal buildings delays the fog onset with a maximum of two hours, an overestimated visibility of 100-200 m and a decrease of the LWC with 0.10-0.15 g/kg compared to the reference.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Tipka ◽  
Petra Seibert

<p>The Lagrangian dispersion model FLEXPART v10.4 uses cloud water content, temperature, and precipitation rates to calculate wet scavenging. Currently, only precipitation fields are interpolated spatially to the particle positions. A simple nearest-neighbour approach is used for cloud parameters and temperature. This is made worse by the fact that precipitation fields from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are temporal integrals whereas all the other parameters refer to a specific time. The pre-processor flex_extract disaggregates the precipitation fields to construct point values that can preserve the integral quantity when interpolated in FLEXPART. However, this method does not preserve precipitation in each time interval, leading to smoothing, or even shifting precipitation into dry periods.</p><p>We have implemented interpolation of all fields relevant for wet scavenging in FLEXPART v10.4 as well as the option to use our improved precipitation disaggregation scheme (https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2503-2018). It introduces two additional subgrid points within one original time interval. This secures consistency, continuity and mass conservation of precipitation within each time interval.</p><p>These updates lead to a massive improvement of the wet deposition fields in a specific test case where we applied a high-resolution outgrid that makes the effects of interpolation issues more visible. Originally, a kind of checkerboard pattern was visible, as well as a banded structure due to the finite time interval between meteorological input fields. Both features are mostly eliminated now. Additionally, the influence of varying the temporal and spatial resolution of the ECMWF input fields was investigated, and the benefit of using the ECMWF cloud water content instead of parametrised values. We also look at the impact of the new version on other, previously used test cases, for example, a lifetime analysis of aerosol particles as well as transport of mineral dust and black carbon.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (21) ◽  
pp. 7911-7936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Pascale ◽  
Simona Bordoni ◽  
Sarah B. Kapnick ◽  
Gabriel A. Vecchi ◽  
Liwei Jia ◽  
...  

Abstract The impact of atmosphere and ocean horizontal resolution on the climatology of North American monsoon Gulf of California (GoC) moisture surges is examined in a suite of global circulation models (CM2.1, FLOR, CM2.5, CM2.6, and HiFLOR) developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). These models feature essentially the same physical parameterizations but differ in horizontal resolution in either the atmosphere (≃200, 50, and 25 km) or the ocean (≃1°, 0.25°, and 0.1°). Increasing horizontal atmospheric resolution from 200 to 50 km results in a drastic improvement in the model’s capability of accurately simulating surge events. The climatological near-surface flow and moisture and precipitation anomalies associated with GoC surges are overall satisfactorily simulated in all higher-resolution models. The number of surge events agrees well with reanalyses, but models tend to underestimate July–August surge-related precipitation and overestimate September surge-related rainfall in the southwestern United States. Large-scale controls supporting the development of GoC surges, such as tropical easterly waves (TEWs), tropical cyclones (TCs), and trans-Pacific Rossby wave trains (RWTs), are also well captured, although models tend to underestimate the TEW and TC magnitude and number. Near-surface GoC surge features and their large-scale forcings (TEWs, TCs, and RWTs) do not appear to be substantially affected by a finer representation of the GoC at higher ocean resolution. However, the substantial reduction of the eastern Pacific warm sea surface temperature bias through flux adjustment in the Forecast-Oriented Low Ocean Resolution (FLOR) model leads to an overall improvement of tropical–extratropical controls on GoC moisture surges and the seasonal cycle of precipitation in the southwestern United States.


Geosciences ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Ciantelli ◽  
Elisa Palazzi ◽  
Jost von Hardenberg ◽  
Carmela Vaccaro ◽  
Francesca Tittarelli ◽  
...  

This work investigates the impact of long-term climate change on heritage sites in Latin America, focusing on two important sites in the Panamanian isthmus included in the World Heritage List: the monumental site of Panamá Viejo (16th century) and the Fortresses of Portobelo and San Lorenzo (17th to 18th centuries). First of all, in order to support the conservation and valorisation of these sites, a characterisation of the main construction materials utilized in the building masonries was performed together with an analysis of the meteoclimatic conditions in their vicinity as provided by monitoring stations recording near-surface air temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall amounts. Secondly, the same climate variables were analysed in the historical and future simulations of a state-of-the-art global climate model, EC-Earth, run at high horizontal resolution, and then used with damage functions to make projections of deterioration phenomena on the Panamanian heritage sites. In particular, we performed an evaluation of the possible surface recession, biomass accumulation, and deterioration due to salt crystallisation cycles on these sites in the future (by midcentury, 2039–2068) compared to the recent past (1979–2008), considering a future scenario of high greenhouse gas emissions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 7551-7565 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Tonttila ◽  
P. Räisänen ◽  
H. Järvinen

Abstract. A new method for parameterizing the subgrid variations of vertical velocity and cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC) is presented for general circulation models (GCMs). These parameterizations build on top of existing parameterizations that create stochastic subgrid cloud columns inside the GCM grid cells, which can be employed by the Monte Carlo independent column approximation approach for radiative transfer. The new model version adds a description for vertical velocity in individual subgrid columns, which can be used to compute cloud activation and the subgrid distribution of the number of cloud droplets explicitly. Autoconversion is also treated explicitly in the subcolumn space. This provides a consistent way of simulating the cloud radiative effects with two-moment cloud microphysical properties defined at subgrid scale. The primary impact of the new parameterizations is to decrease the CDNC over polluted continents, while over the oceans the impact is smaller. Moreover, the lower CDNC induces a stronger autoconversion of cloud water to rain. The strongest reduction in CDNC and cloud water content over the continental areas promotes weaker shortwave cloud radiative effects (SW CREs) even after retuning the model. However, compared to the reference simulation, a slightly stronger SW CRE is seen e.g. over mid-latitude oceans, where CDNC remains similar to the reference simulation, and the in-cloud liquid water content is slightly increased after retuning the model.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Vazquez ◽  
Ivan Parras-Berrocal ◽  
William Cabos ◽  
Dmitry V. Sein ◽  
Rafael Mañanes ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Canary current upwelling is one of the major eastern boundary coastal upwelling systems in the world, bearing a high productive ecosystem and commercially important fisheries. The Canary current upwelling system (CCUS) has a large latitudinal extension, usually divided into upwelling zones with different characteristics. Eddies, filaments and other mesoscale processes are known to have an impact in the upwelling productivity, thus for a proper representation of the CCUS and high horizontal resolution are required. Here we assess the CCUS present climate in the atmosphere–ocean regionally coupled model. The regional coupled model presents a global oceanic component with increased horizontal resolution along the northwestern African coast, and its performance over the CCUS is assessed against relevant reanalysis data sets and compared with an ensemble of global climate models (GCMs) and an ensemble of atmosphere-only regional climate models (RCMs) in order to assess the role of the horizontal resolution. The coupled system reproduces the larger scale pattern of the CCUS and its latitudinal and seasonal variability over the coastal band, improving the GCMs outputs. Moreover, it shows a performance comparable to the ensemble of RCMs in representing the coastal wind stress and near-surface air temperature fields, showing the impact of the higher resolution and coupling for CCUS climate modelling. The model is able of properly reproducing mesoscale structures, being able to simulate the upwelling filaments events off Cape Ghir, which are not well represented in most of GCMs. Our results stress the ability of the regionally coupled model to reproduce the larger scale as well as mesoscale processes over the CCUS, opening the possibility to evaluate the climate change signal there with increased confidence.


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