Sudden changes occur where the mean values associated with two adjacent non-overlapping
windows of data are anomalously different, and the transition between the
window means occurs over a scale that is small relative to the scale of the windows.
Positions of sudden changes can be economically retrieved. The sudden change...
Atmospheric boundary layers become stably stratified at night over land when the surface becomes colder than the air layer above. In stable nocturnal boundary layers (SNBL), turbulence becomes weak and intermittent, terrain-induced phenomena such as drainage currents or gravity-waves emerge and the surface heterogeneity is enhanced. Because of their complexity...
The statistics describing variations of turbulent motions within the so called inertial range of length scales depend on the scale over which the motions are varying and the "average" rate at which the turbulent kinetic energy is being dissipated on the molecular scale. This hypothesis stemmed from the similarity arguments...
The very stable boundary layer is a region of the atmosphere typified by large
vertical gradients of temperature and momentum. Analysis of very stable atmospheric
flows is complicated by the presence of nonlinear interactions among gravity waves, shear-driven
overturning circulations, two-dimensional vortical modes and intermittent turbulence
in various stages of...
A two-scale approach for the turbulent mixing of momentum in an unstable stratified boundary layer is proposed in an attempt to eliminate existing inconsistencies between parameterized mixing of heat and momentum. The parameterization of the large eddy stress is suitable for simple boundary layer models where computational efficiency is important....
The use of efficient basis functions to model and represent flows with
internal sharp velocity gradients, such as shocks or eddy microfronts, are
investigated. This is achieved by analysing artificial data, observed atmospheric
turbulence data and by the use of a Burgers' equation based spectral
model. The concept of an...
Globally intermittent turbulence is characterized by sudden switching from significant turbulence to weak turbulence and back on time scales ranging from seconds to tens of minutes as opposed to microscale intermittency, which is due to organization of small scale gradients by individual eddies on scales as small as the Kolmogorov...
Several horizontal flight segments from SESAME and
ALPEX are studied using structure functions and specral
analysis methods. Theoretical analysis of the relative
errors in structure function and correlation function in
the presence of large scale wave activity is presented. The
effect of stratification and shear on the -5/3 inertial
subrange...
This study concentrates on analysis of LongEZ aircraft data taken offshore of the Atlantic Coast of the United States. Due to the land structure of the region, it was possible to isolate the effect of narrow land on air as it flows offshore. The narrow land (Outer Banks) separates inland...
An eigenvector analysis of the velocity-temperature correlation
matrix is applied to clear-air turbulence measured by aircraft in the
Bora. The eigenvectors are identified with the main eddies of the
turbulence. This study attempts to infer the three-dimensional
structure of these eddies. The results are compared with turbulent
structures in the...
The stability of steady-state solutions of the equations governing two-dimensional,
homogeneous, incompressible fluid flow are analyzed in the context
of shear-flow in a channel. Both the linear and nonlinear theories are
reviewed and compared. In proving nonlinear stability of an equilibrium,
emphasis is placed on using the stability algorithm developed...
An analytical two-layer model consisting of a time-dependent stratified
boundary layer topped by stratified free flow is developed in order
to study atmospheric boundary layer production of vertical motion. To
avoid use of a constant eddy viscosity, the boundary layer equations are
layer-integrated over a fixed depth, and surface stress...
Relationships among the surface wind, horizontal synoptic-scale
pressure gradient and topography are studied in the Willamette Valley
in western Oregon. Terrain features alter the standard surface wind-pressure
gradient relationship such that the angle between the surface
wind and the surface geostrophic wind is most frequently 60°.
In winter the surface...
High resolution data of moisture, temperature and wind velocity
collected by aircraft during the 1975 Air Mass Transformation
Experiment (ANTEX '75) provide information for detailed investigations
of the phenomena occurring at the top of a cloud-topped mixed
layer.
Joint frequency diagrams of humidity and temperature reveal that
for parts of...
The influence of boundary layer pumping on an externally-forced
synoptic-scale flow is examined. The results follow earlier theories of
stratified incompressible Boussinesq flow. These theories state that
the spin-down time scale and the penetration depth of the influence of
boundary layer pumping are inversely proportional to the stratification
and directly...
Surface meteorological data collected at a mesonetwork in
Colorado during the 1973 National Hail Research Experiment were
analyzed to see if a diurnal oscillation of boundary layer wind exists
and also to determine the mechanism that drives the wind system.
The average temperature, pressure, and wind velocity for a month's...
A method of calculating surface evapotranspiration by separately
including the effects of vegetation and atmospheric evaporative demand
under the condition of nonlimiting soil moisture is presented. A
literature survey is conducted to determine the effects of plants on
evapotranspiration.
To represent the atmospheric evaporative demand, the original
potential evaporation equation...
In plume theory it is generally assumed that a plume issuing from a round source maintains a round cross section throughout. The consequences of this hypothesis are significant; this fact should motivate research into its validity. This paper investigates conditions and analyzes mechanisms that cause fluid plumes to undergo systematic...
The steady Reynolds stress and turbulent energy equations for steady, horizontally homogeneous mean flow are used to relate the Reynolds stress u′w′ to the mean wind shear and heat fluxes in the planetary boundary layer.
The resulting Reynolds stress demonstrates a 3/2 power dependence on the stress Richardson number and...
Steady, longitudinally invariant, barotropic, boundary layer flow is numerically studied at low latitudes where advective accelerations may he large and the Coriolis parameter is small. Flow is generated by specifying the pressure gradient field independent of the flow.
It is found that as the flow approaches the equator, advective terms...
The relationship between the outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) field
over the tropical Pacific and wintertime monthly precipitation for the
western U. S. is investigated, using the mid-latitude upper-air circulation
as an intermediary. Principal components (PC's) of the 500mb monthly
averaged height field over the NE Pacific and western North America...
Experimental work at the 1982 Dry Deposition Intercomparison
Experiment (DDIEx) involved the use of optical particle counters for
covariance estimates of dry deposition velocities of accumulation mode
aerosols. Meteorological and particle flux observations are
presented. Deposition velocity estimates exhibit scatter about zero.
A formulation of the standard error of the...
This study evaluates the prediction of heat and moisture fluxes from a new land surface scheme with eddy correlation data collected at the old aspen site during the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) in 1994. The model used in this study couples a multilayer vegetation model with a soil model. Inclusion...
Eddy‐correlation fluxes are compared to air‐sea fluxes predicted by a widely used bulk flux formulation without wave‐state effects. Systematic discrepancies are found. For example, the model approximately equates the roughness lengths for heat and moisture; however, the observed roughness length for heat (zoh) exceeds that for moisture (zoq) by an...
The stable nocturnal boundary layer is commonly viewed or modelled as a balance between the temperature tendency (cooling) and vertical heat-flux divergence. Sometimes the radiative-flux divergence is also included. This perspective has dictated the design of field experiments for investigating stable nocturnal boundary layers. Tower-based micrometeorological data from three field...
Vertical profiles of the time-averaged wind stress, wind speed and buoyancy flux from the off-shore tower site in the Risø Air Sea Experiment are used to evaluate similarity theory in the coastal zone. The observed dependence of the non-dimensional wind shear on stability is compared to the traditional parametrization. Relationships...
The sublimation of snow and evaporation of melted snow is contrasted between brush, grass and bare ground sites using eddy-correlation data. Averaged over the entire winter season, the evaporation/sublimation is about 20% greater over the brush site than the bare ground site, apparently due to greater supply of snow. Blowing...
Using eddy correlation data collected by the LongEZ research aircraft, the adjustment of atmospheric flow downstream from a coastline is examined. Along-shore variation of the turbulence over the water is generated by the varying width of the upstream land strip between the sea and inland water. Over the coastal zone,...
The value of the effective exchange coefficient for area-averaged fluxes can depend significantly on the averaging scale. This dependence implies that the exchange coefficient in numerical models should depend on grid size. The main goal of this study is the assessment of the importance of such scale-dependence. When the large-scale...
The correlation between dimensionless shear ϕₘ and dimensionless height z/L, where L is the Obukhov length, for stable conditions is strongly influenced by self‐correlation for the present datasets. This effect is quite large for stronger stability but still significant for near‐neutral conditions. A conditional analysis of nocturnal stable boundary‐layer data,...
This study is mainly concentrated on examining the positive cloud-to-ground lightning activity associated with Mesoscale Convective Systems. Six MCS events which occurred during the O.K. PRE-STORM program in 1985 are studied. Data indicating the location and polarity of the cloud-to-ground lightning flashes from a lightning location network are analyzed in...
A modeling study is undertaken to better understand the physics of katabatic flows. This study is divided into three topics; a comparison between a large eddy simulation (LES) and a mesoscale model of katabatic flows, a sensitivity study of katabatic flows to various physical parameters, and an investigation into the...
In this article, we examine the stochastic characteristics of non-turbulent motions in the stable boundary layer. The behaviour of mesoscale motions in the atmospheric stable boundary layer is poorly understood beyond case studies of unusually well-defined events or monotonic waves. Eight networks of wind observations are analysed in order to...
Rawinsonde observations taken during the National Hail Research Experiment are analyzed by multiple-linear regression techniques to study the influence of environmental factors on hailstorm severity. The latter is inferred from integrated radar returns. The roles of mixed-layer flow and thermodynamic properties as well as upper tropospheric kinematic properties are emphasized....
The 10-m neutral drag coefficient (C[subscript DN10]) over the sea is calculated using a large observational dataset consisting of 5800 estimates of the mean flow and the fluxes from aircraft eddy-covariance measurements. The dataset includes observations from 11 different experiments with four different research aircraft. One of the goals is...
Over 5000 aircraft eddy-covariance measurements from four different aircraft in nine different experiments are used to develop a simple model for the friction velocity over the sea. Unlike the widely used Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) bulk flux scheme, the simple model (i) does not use Monin–Obukhov similarity theory (MOST)...
From almost 7000 near-surface eddy-covariance flux measurements over the sea, the authors deduce a new air–sea drag relation for aerodynamically rough flow: u* = 0.0583Uₙ₁₀ 2 0.243. Here u* is the measured friction velocity, and Uₙ₁₀ is the neutral-stability wind speed at a reference height of 10 m. This relation...
Both the form of functional relationships applied for soil water properties and the natural field-scale variability of such properties can significantly impact simulation of the soil-plant-atmosphere system on a diurnal timescale. Various input parameters for soil water properties including effective saturation, residual water content, anerobiosis point, field capacity, and permanent...
This study addresses the relationship between thermal microfronts and coherent vortex structures in homogeneous turbulence. The turbulence is created by mean shear in a weakly stratified flow. The data set is generated by direct numerical simulation providing highly resolved instantaneous three‐dimensional fields of fluctuating velocity and temperature (1603 data points...
Data from three micronetworks with eddy correlation data and three additional micronetworks without eddy correlation data are analyzed to study the spatial variability of surface air temperature in complex terrain. A simple similarity relationship is constructed to relate the spatial variation of air temperature along the slope to the thermal...
Various errors and influences leading to differences between tower- and aircraft-measured fluxes are surveyed. This survey is motivated by reports in the literature that aircraft fluxes are sometimes smaller than tower-measured fluxes. Both tower and aircraft flux errors are larger with surface heterogeneity due to several independent effects. Surface heterogeneity...
The Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) had as a primary objective
determining the radiative forcing due to anthropogenic aerosols over
climatologically significant space and time scales: the Indian Ocean during the
winter monsoon, January-March. During the winter monsoon, polluted, low-level
air from the Asian subcontinent blows over the Arabian Sea and...
This study surveys and evaluates similarity theory for estimating the sea-surface drag coefficient with the bulk aerodynamic method. The most commonly used formulations of the aerodynamic roughness length, required by similarity theory, are examined using data sets from four different field programs. These relationships include the Charnock formulation and the...
The flux-gradient relationship of water vapor Fq was obtained from the Cooperative Atmosphere-Surface Exchange Study-1999 (CASES-99) field experiment, which was conducted on a flat and grassy field in the southeastern part of Kansas, USA, during October 1999. The CASES-99 data include turbulence measurements of wind, temperature, and vapor density along...
Toward the goal of predicting area-averaged evapotranspiration, the evaporative fraction is modelled in terms of surface radiation temperature, air temperature, solar zenith angle, Normalized Difference of the Vegetation Index and albedo. Previous relationships break down when applied simultaneously to a variety of surfaces. The zenith angle is required to account...
The authors investigate atmospheric internal gravity waves (IGWs): their generation and induction of global intermittent turbulence in the nocturnal stable atmospheric boundary layer based on the new concept of turbulence generation discussed in a prior paper by Sun et al. The IGWs are generated by air lifted by convergence forced...
The Bowen ratio, the ratio of the turbulent surface fluxes of sensible (Hₛ) and latent (Hₗ) heat, Bo ≡ Hₛ/Hₗ, occurs throughout micrometeorology. It finds application in the Bowen ratio and energy budget method, where it provides both turbulent heat fluxes when only the available energy at the surface is...