Dependency of the turbulent heat exchange over polar leads on the lead width – an LES study

Author(s):  
Micha Gryschka ◽  
Xu Zhou ◽  
Matthias Sühring

<p>Leads are Chanel-like openings in the sea-ice through which heat of several 100 Watt/m<sup>2</sup> is transferred from the ocean into the atmosphere. Even though leads account only for a view percent to the total ice coverage in polar regions, they modify the polar boundary layer significantly. Therefore, leads need to be considered in numerical weather and climate models. Since, generally leads are not explicitly resolved in these models it is important to understand the overall effect of leads of different sizes onto the boundary layer for different meteorological conditions.</p><p>With numerous Large-Eddy Simulations we investigated the dependency of the lead averaged surface heat flux on the lead width in a range between 50 m and 25 000 m for different meteorological conditions. Generally, we found under same temperature differences between ice and water and same meteorological conditions an increase of the the lead averaged heat flux with increasing lead width by more then 200% for some situations. We like to give some brief explanations of the possible causes for this behavior as well as to oppose these results to other former studies in this field, which might disagree to them in some points.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 11893-11906
Author(s):  
Jessica Slater ◽  
Juha Tonttila ◽  
Gordon McFiggans ◽  
Paul Connolly ◽  
Sami Romakkaniemi ◽  
...  

Abstract. The aerosol–radiation–meteorology feedback loop is the process by which aerosols interact with solar radiation to influence boundary layer meteorology. Through this feedback, aerosols cause cooling of the surface, resulting in reduced buoyant turbulence, enhanced atmospheric stratification and suppressed boundary layer growth. These changes in meteorology result in the accumulation of aerosols in a shallow boundary layer, which can enhance the extent of aerosol–radiation interactions. The feedback effect is thought to be important during periods of high aerosol concentrations, for example, during urban haze. However, direct quantification and isolation of the factors and processes affecting the feedback loop have thus far been limited to observations and low-resolution modelling studies. The coupled large-eddy simulation (LES)–aerosol model, the University of California, Los Angeles large-eddy simulation – Sectional Aerosol Scheme for Large Scale Applications (UCLALES-SALSA), allows for direct interpretation on the sensitivity of boundary layer dynamics to aerosol perturbations. In this work, UCLALES-SALSA has for the first time been explicitly set up to model the urban environment, including addition of an anthropogenic heat flux and treatment of heat storage terms, to examine the sensitivity of meteorology to the newly coupled aerosol–radiation scheme. We find that (a) sensitivity of boundary layer dynamics in the model to initial meteorological conditions is extremely high, (b) simulations with high aerosol loading (220 µg m−3) compared to low aerosol loading (55 µg m−3) cause overall surface cooling and a reduction in sensible heat flux, turbulent kinetic energy and planetary boundary layer height for all 3 d examined, and (c) initial meteorological conditions impact the vertical distribution of aerosols throughout the day.





2013 ◽  
Vol 94 (11) ◽  
pp. 1691-1706 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. A. M. Holtslag ◽  
G. Svensson ◽  
P. Baas ◽  
S. Basu ◽  
B. Beare ◽  
...  

The representation of the atmospheric boundary layer is an important part of weather and climate models and impacts many applications such as air quality and wind energy. Over the years, the performance in modeling 2-m temperature and 10-m wind speed has improved but errors are still significant. This is in particular the case under clear skies and low wind speed conditions at night as well as during winter in stably stratified conditions over land and ice. In this paper, the authors review these issues and provide an overview of the current understanding and model performance. Results from weather forecast and climate models are used to illustrate the state of the art as well as findings and recommendations from three intercomparison studies held within the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Atmospheric Boundary Layer Study (GABLS). Within GABLS, the focus has been on the examination of the representation of the stable boundary layer and the diurnal cycle over land in clear-sky conditions. For this purpose, single-column versions of weather and climate models have been compared with observations, research models, and large-eddy simulations. The intercomparison cases are based on observations taken in the Arctic, Kansas, and Cabauw in the Netherlands. From these studies, we find that even for the noncloudy boundary layer important parameterization challenges remain.



2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangzhou Song

AbstractSea surface currents are commonly neglected when estimating the air–sea turbulent heat fluxes in bulk formulas. Using buoy observations in the Bohai Sea, this paper investigated the effects of near-coast multiscale currents on the quantification of turbulent heat fluxes, namely, latent heat flux (LH) and sensible heat flux (SH). The maximum current reached 1 m s−1 in magnitude, and a steady northeastward current of 0.16 m s−1 appeared in the southern Bohai Strait. The predominant tidal signal was the semidiurnal current, followed by diurnal components. The mean absolute surface wind was from the northeast with a speed of approximately 3 m s−1. The surface winds at a height of 11 m were dominated by the East Asian monsoon. As a result of upwind flow, the monthly mean differences in LH and SH between the estimates with and without surface currents ranged from 1 to 2 W m−2 in July (stable boundary layer) and November (unstable boundary layer). The hourly differences were on average 10 W m−2 and ranged from 0 to 24 W m−2 due to changes in the relative wind speed by high-frequency rotating surface tidal currents. The diurnal variability in LH/SH was demonstrated under stable and unstable boundary conditions. Observations provided an accurate benchmark for flux comparisons. The newly updated atmospheric reanalysis products MERRA-2 and ERA5 were superior to the 1° OAFlux data at this buoy location. However, future efforts in heat flux computation are still needed to, for example, consider surface currents and resolve diurnal variations.



2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (8) ◽  
pp. 2397-2421 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Justin Small ◽  
Frank O. Bryan ◽  
Stuart P. Bishop ◽  
Robert A. Tomas

Abstract A traditional view is that the ocean outside of the tropics responds passively to atmosphere forcing, which implies that air–sea heat fluxes are mainly driven by atmosphere variability. This paper tests this viewpoint using state-of-the-art air–sea turbulent heat flux observational analyses and a climate model run at different resolutions. It is found that in midlatitude ocean frontal zones the variability of air–sea heat fluxes is not predominantly driven by the atmosphere variations but instead is forced by sea surface temperature (SST) variations arising from intrinsic oceanic variability. Meanwhile in most of the tropics and subtropics wind is the dominant driver of heat flux variability, and atmosphere humidity is mainly important in higher latitudes. The predominance of ocean forcing of heat fluxes found in frontal regions occurs on scales of around 700 km or less. Spatially smoothing the data to larger scales results in the traditional atmosphere-driving case, while filtering to retain only small scales of 5° or less leads to ocean forcing of heat fluxes over most of the globe. All observational analyses examined (1° OAFlux; 0.25° J-OFURO3; 0.25° SeaFlux) show this general behavior. A standard resolution (1°) climate model fails to reproduce the midlatitude, small-scale ocean forcing of heat flux: refining the ocean grid to resolve eddies (0.1°) gives a more realistic representation of ocean forcing but the variability of both SST and of heat flux is too high compared to observational analyses.





Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Jane M. Bopape ◽  
Robert S. Plant ◽  
Omduth Coceal

Large-eddy simulations are performed using the U.K. Met Office Large Eddy Model to study the effects of resolution on turbulent structures in a convective boundary layer. A standard Smagorinsky subgrid scheme is used. As the grid length is increased, the diagnosed height of the boundary layer increases, and the horizontally- and temporally-averaged temperature near the surface and in the inversion layer increase. At the highest resolution, quadrant analysis shows that the majority of events in the lower boundary layer are associated with cold descending air, followed by warm ascending air. The largest contribution to the total heat flux is made by warm ascending air, with associated strong thermals. At lower resolutions, the contribution to the heat flux from cold descending air is increased, and that from cold ascending air is reduced in the lower boundary layer; around the inversion layer, however, the contribution from cold ascending air is increased. Calculations of the heating rate show that the differences in cold ascending air are responsible for the warm bias below the boundary layer top in the low resolution simulations. Correlation length and time scales for coherent resolved structures increase with increasing grid coarseness. The results overall suggest that differences in the simulations are due to weaker mixing between thermals and their environment at lower resolutions. Some simple numerical experiments are performed to increase the mixing in the lower resolution simulations and to investigate backscatter. Such simulations are successful at reducing the contribution of cold ascending air to the heat flux just below the inversion, although the effects in the lower boundary layer are weaker.



2011 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Schwänen ◽  
Andrew Duggleby

Internal cooling of the trailing edge region in a gas turbine blade is typically achieved with an array of pin fins. In order to better understand the effectiveness of this configuration, high performance computations are performed on cylindrical pin fins with a spanwise distance to fin diameter ratio of 2 and height over fin diameter ratio of one. For validation purposes, the flow Reynolds number based on hydraulic channel diameter and bulk velocity (Re = 12,800) was set to match experiments available in the open literature. Simulations included a URANS and LES on a single row of pin fins where the URANS domain was 1 pin wide versus the LES with 3 pins. The resulting time-dependent flow field was analyzed using a variation of bi-orthogonal decomposition (BOD), where the correlation matrices were built using the internal energy in addition to the three velocity components. This enables a detailed comparison of URANS and LES to assess the URANS modeling assumptions as well as a flow decomposition with respect to the flow structure’s influence on surface heat transfer. This analysis shows low order modes which do not contribute to turbulent heat flux, but instead increase the heat exchanger’s global inefficiency. In the URANS study, the forth mode showed the first nonzero temperature basis function, which means that a considerable amount of energy is contained in flow structures that do not contribute to increasing endwall heat transfer. In the LES, the first non zero temperature basis function was the seventh mode. Both orthogonal basis function sets were evaluated with respect to each mode’s contribution to turbulent heat exchange with the surface. This analysis showed that there exists one distinct, high energy mode that contributes to wall heat flux, whereas all others do not. Modifying this mode could potentially be used to improve the heat exchanger’s efficiency with respect to pressure loss.



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