scholarly journals Spatial structures in the heat budget of the Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. van de Berg ◽  
M. R. van den Broeke ◽  
E. van Meijgaard

Abstract. Output from the regional climate model RACMO2/ANT is used to calculate the heat budget of the Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The main feature of the wintertime Antarctic ABL is a persistent temperature deficit compared to the free atmosphere. The magnitude of this deficit is controlled by the heat budget. During winter, transport of heat towards the surface by turbulence and net longwave emission are the primary ABL cooling terms. These processes show horizontal spatial variability only on continental scales. Vertical and horizontal, i.e. along-slope, advection of heat are the main warming terms. Over regions with convex ice sheet topography, i.e. domes and ridges, warming by downward vertical advection is enhanced due to divergence of the ABL wind field. Horizontal advection balances excess warming caused by vertical advection, hence the temperature deficit in the ABL weakens over domes and ridges along the prevailing katabatic wind. Conversely, vertical advection is reduced in regions with concave topography, i.e. valleys, where the ABL temperature deficit enlarges along the katabatic wind. Along the coast, horizontal and vertical advection is governed by the inability of the large-scale circulation to adapt to small scale topographic features. Meso-scale topographic structures have thus a strong impact on the ABL winter temperature, besides latitude and surface elevation. During summer, this mechanism is much weaker, and the horizontal variability of ABL temperatures is smaller.

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-301
Author(s):  
W. J. van de Berg ◽  
M. R. van den Broeke ◽  
E. van Meijgaard

Abstract. Output from the regional climate model RACMO2/ANT is used to calculate the heat budget of the Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The main feature of the wintertime Antarctic ABL is a persistent temperature deficit compared to the free atmosphere. The magnitude of this deficit is controlled by the heat budget. During winter, transport of heat towards the surface by turbulence and net longwave emission are the primary ABL cooling terms. These processes show horizontal spatial variability only on continental scales. Vertical and horizontal advection of heat are the main warming terms. Over regions with convex ice sheet topography, i.e. domes and ridges, warming by downward vertical advection is enhanced due to divergence of the ABL wind field. Horizontal advection balances any excess warming caused by vertical advection, hence the ABL over domes and ridges tends to have a relatively weak temperature deficit. Conversely, vertical advection is reduced in regions with concave topography, i.e. valleys, where the ABL temperature deficit is enlarged. Along the coast, horizontal and vertical advection is governed by the inability of the large-scale circulation to adapt to small scale topographic features. Meso-scale (~10 km) topographic structures have thus a strong impact on the ABL winter temperature, besides latitude and surface elevation. During summer, this mechanism is much weaker; and the horizontal variability of ABL temperatures is smaller.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Ettema ◽  
M. R. van den Broeke ◽  
E. van Meijgaard ◽  
W. J. van de Berg

Abstract. The spatial variability of near-surface variables and surface energy balance components over the Greenland ice sheet are presented, using the output of a regional atmospheric climate model for the period 1958–2008. The model was evaluated in Part 1 of this paper. The near-surface temperature over the ice sheet is affected by surface elevation, latitude, longitude, large-scale and small-scale advection, occurrence of summer melt and mesoscale topographical features. The atmospheric boundary layer is characterised by a strong temperature inversion, due to continuous longwave cooling of the surface. In combination with a gently sloping surface the radiative loss maintains a persistent katabatic wind. This radiative heat loss is mainly balanced by turbulent sensible heat transport towards the surface. In summer, the surface is near radiative balance, resulting in lower wind speeds. Absorption of shortwave radiation and a positive subsurface heat flux due to refreezing melt water are heat sources for surface sublimation and melt. The strongest temperature deficits (>13 °C) are found on the northeastern slopes, where the strongest katabatic winds (>9 m s−1) and lowest relative humidity (<65%) occur. Due to strong large scale winds, clear sky (cloud cover <0.5) and a concave surface, a continuous supply of cold dry air is generated, which enhances the katabatic forcing and suppresses subsidence of potentially warmer free atmosphere air.


2007 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1383-1395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan E. Pleim

Abstract The modeling of the atmospheric boundary layer during convective conditions has long been a major source of uncertainty in the numerical modeling of meteorological conditions and air quality. Much of the difficulty stems from the large range of turbulent scales that are effective in the convective boundary layer (CBL). Both small-scale turbulence that is subgrid in most mesoscale grid models and large-scale turbulence extending to the depth of the CBL are important for the vertical transport of atmospheric properties and chemical species. Eddy diffusion schemes assume that all of the turbulence is subgrid and therefore cannot realistically simulate convective conditions. Simple nonlocal closure PBL models, such as the Blackadar convective model that has been a mainstay PBL option in the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model (MM5) for many years and the original asymmetric convective model (ACM), also an option in MM5, represent large-scale transport driven by convective plumes but neglect small-scale, subgrid turbulent mixing. A new version of the ACM (ACM2) has been developed that includes the nonlocal scheme of the original ACM combined with an eddy diffusion scheme. Thus, the ACM2 is able to represent both the supergrid- and subgrid-scale components of turbulent transport in the convective boundary layer. Testing the ACM2 in one-dimensional form and comparing it with large-eddy simulations and field data from the 1999 Cooperative Atmosphere–Surface Exchange Study demonstrates that the new scheme accurately simulates PBL heights, profiles of fluxes and mean quantities, and surface-level values. The ACM2 performs equally well for both meteorological parameters (e.g., potential temperature, moisture variables, and winds) and trace chemical concentrations, which is an advantage over eddy diffusion models that include a nonlocal term in the form of a gradient adjustment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ginaldi Ari Nugroho ◽  
Kosei Yamaguchi ◽  
Eiichi Nakakita ◽  
Masayuki K. Yamamoto ◽  
Seiji Kawamura ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;Detailed observation of small scale perturbation in the atmospheric boundary layer during the first generated cumulus cloud are conducted. Our target is to study this small scale perturbation, especially related to the thermal activity at the first generated cumulus cloud. The observation is performed during the daytime on August 17, 2018, and September 03, 2018. Location is focused in the urban area of Kobe, Japan. High-resolution instruments such as Boundary Layer Radar, Doppler Lidar, and Time Lapse camera are used in this observation. Boundary Layer Radar, and Doppler Lidar are used for clear air observation. Meanwhile Time Lapse Camera are used for cloud existence observation. The atmospheric boundary layer structure is analyzed based on vertical velocity profile, variance, skewness, and estimated atmospheric boundary layer height. Wavelet are used to observe more of the period of the thermal activity. Furthermore, time correlation between vertical velocity time series from height 0.3 to 2 km and image pixel of generated cloud time series are also discussed in this study.&lt;/p&gt;


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 4043-4068
Author(s):  
Liming Zhou ◽  
Yuhong Tian ◽  
Nan Wei ◽  
Shu-peng Ho ◽  
Jing Li

AbstractTurbulent mixing in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) governs the vertical exchange of heat, moisture, momentum, trace gases, and aerosols in the surface–atmosphere interface. The PBL height (PBLH) represents the maximum height of the free atmosphere that is directly influenced by Earth’s surface. This study uses a multidata synthesis approach from an ensemble of multiple global datasets of radiosonde observations, reanalysis products, and climate model simulations to examine the spatial patterns of long-term PBLH trends over land between 60°S and 60°N for the period 1979–2019. By considering both the sign and statistical significance of trends, we identify large-scale regions where the change signal is robust and consistent to increase our confidence in the obtained results. Despite differences in the magnitude and sign of PBLH trends over many areas, all datasets reveal a consensus on increasing PBLH over the enormous and very dry Sahara Desert and Arabian Peninsula (SDAP) and declining PBLH in India. At the global scale, the changes in PBLH are significantly correlated positively with the changes in surface heating and negatively with the changes in surface moisture, consistent with theory and previous findings in the literature. The rising PBLH is in good agreement with increasing sensible heat and surface temperature and decreasing relative humidity over the SDAP associated with desert amplification, while the declining PBLH resonates well with increasing relative humidity and latent heat and decreasing sensible heat and surface warming in India. The PBLH changes agree with radiosonde soundings over the SDAP but cannot be validated over India due to lack of good-quality radiosonde observations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1383-1402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Davini ◽  
Jost von Hardenberg ◽  
Susanna Corti ◽  
Hannah M. Christensen ◽  
Stephan Juricke ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979–2008) and a climate change projection (2039–2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850–2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate – specifically the Madden–Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).


2013 ◽  
Vol 715 ◽  
pp. 477-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zambri Harun ◽  
Jason P. Monty ◽  
Romain Mathis ◽  
Ivan Marusic

AbstractResearch into high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layers in recent years has brought about a renewed interest in the larger-scale structures. It is now known that these structures emerge more prominently in the outer region not only due to increased Reynolds number (Metzger & Klewicki, Phys. Fluids, vol. 13(3), 2001, pp. 692–701; Hutchins & Marusic, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 579, 2007, pp. 1–28), but also when a boundary layer is exposed to an adverse pressure gradient (Bradshaw, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 29, 1967, pp. 625–645; Lee & Sung, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 639, 2009, pp. 101–131). The latter case has not received as much attention in the literature. As such, this work investigates the modification of the large-scale features of boundary layers subjected to zero, adverse and favourable pressure gradients. It is first shown that the mean velocities, turbulence intensities and turbulence production are significantly different in the outer region across the three cases. Spectral and scale decomposition analyses confirm that the large scales are more energized throughout the entire adverse pressure gradient boundary layer, especially in the outer region. Although more energetic, there is a similar spectral distribution of energy in the wake region, implying the geometrical structure of the outer layer remains universal in all cases. Comparisons are also made of the amplitude modulation of small scales by the large-scale motions for the three pressure gradient cases. The wall-normal location of the zero-crossing of small-scale amplitude modulation is found to increase with increasing pressure gradient, yet this location continues to coincide with the large-scale energetic peak wall-normal location (as has been observed in zero pressure gradient boundary layers). The amplitude modulation effect is found to increase as pressure gradient is increased from favourable to adverse.


2018 ◽  
Vol 856 ◽  
pp. 135-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Salesky ◽  
W. Anderson

A number of recent studies have demonstrated the existence of so-called large- and very-large-scale motions (LSM, VLSM) that occur in the logarithmic region of inertia-dominated wall-bounded turbulent flows. These regions exhibit significant streamwise coherence, and have been shown to modulate the amplitude and frequency of small-scale inner-layer fluctuations in smooth-wall turbulent boundary layers. In contrast, the extent to which analogous modulation occurs in inertia-dominated flows subjected to convective thermal stratification (low Richardson number) and Coriolis forcing (low Rossby number), has not been considered. And yet, these parameter values encompass a wide range of important environmental flows. In this article, we present evidence of amplitude modulation (AM) phenomena in the unstably stratified (i.e. convective) atmospheric boundary layer, and link changes in AM to changes in the topology of coherent structures with increasing instability. We perform a suite of large eddy simulations spanning weakly ($-z_{i}/L=3.1$) to highly convective ($-z_{i}/L=1082$) conditions (where$-z_{i}/L$is the bulk stability parameter formed from the boundary-layer depth$z_{i}$and the Obukhov length $L$) to investigate how AM is affected by buoyancy. Results demonstrate that as unstable stratification increases, the inclination angle of surface layer structures (as determined from the two-point correlation of streamwise velocity) increases from$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\approx 15^{\circ }$for weakly convective conditions to nearly vertical for highly convective conditions. As$-z_{i}/L$increases, LSMs in the streamwise velocity field transition from long, linear updrafts (or horizontal convective rolls) to open cellular patterns, analogous to turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection. These changes in the instantaneous velocity field are accompanied by a shift in the outer peak in the streamwise and vertical velocity spectra to smaller dimensionless wavelengths until the energy is concentrated at a single peak. The decoupling procedure proposed by Mathiset al.(J. Fluid Mech., vol. 628, 2009a, pp. 311–337) is used to investigate the extent to which amplitude modulation of small-scale turbulence occurs due to large-scale streamwise and vertical velocity fluctuations. As the spatial attributes of flow structures change from streamwise to vertically dominated, modulation by the large-scale streamwise velocity decreases monotonically. However, the modulating influence of the large-scale vertical velocity remains significant across the stability range considered. We report, finally, that amplitude modulation correlations are insensitive to the computational mesh resolution for flows forced by shear, buoyancy and Coriolis accelerations.


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