Peter G. Duynkerke

Large‐eddy simulation of the diurnal cycle of shallow cumulus convection over land

SUMMARY Large-eddy simulations of the development of shallow cumulus convection over land are presented. Many characteristics of the cumulus layer previously found in simulations of quasi-steady convection over the sea are found to be reproduced in this more strongly forced, unsteady case. Furthermore, the results are shown to be encouragingly robust, with similar results obtained with eight independent models, and also across a range of numerical resolutions. The datasets produced are already being used in the development and evaluation of parametrizations used in numerical weather-prediction and climate models.

Radiation Fog: A Comparison of Model Simulation with Detailed Observations

Abstract A one-dimensional model designed to study the formation, growth, and dissipation of radiation fog is described. The model is compared with detailed observations made at the 200-m tower at Cabauw in the Netherlands. This study we use observations made in a shallow radiation fog that formed on the night of 16/17 August 1988. The model seems to be able to describe the most important mechanisms occurring during the fog evolution. In this study special attention is given to the parameterization of the vegetation, which is important for a good representation of the (minimum) air temperature. The influence of turbulence transport, longwave radiative cooling, and gravitational droplet settling on the fog evolution is described.

Observed Lagrangian Transition of Stratocumulus into Cumulus during ASTEX: Mean State and Turbulence Structure

Aircraft measurements made during the ‘‘First Lagrangian’’ of the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (ASTEX) between 12 and 14 June 1992 are presented. During this Lagrangian experiment an air mass was followed that was advected southward by the mean wind. Five aircraft flights were undertaken to observe the transition of a stratocumulus cloud deck to thin and broken stratocumulus clouds penetrated by cumulus from below. From the horizontal aircraft legs the boundary layer mean structure, microphysics, turbulence structure, and entrainment were analyzed. The vertical profiles of the vertical velocity skewness are shown to illustrate the transition of a cloudy boundary layer predominantly driven by longwave radiative cooling at the cloud top to one driven mainly by convection due to an unstable surface stratification and cumulus clouds. During the last flight before the stratocumulus deck was observed to be broken and replaced by cumuli, the total water flux, the virtual potential temperature flux, and the vertical velocity variance in the stratocumulus cloud layer were found significantly larger compared with the previous flights. To analyze the cloud-top stability the mean jumps of conserved variables across the inversion were determined from porpoising runs through the cloud top. These jumps were compared with cloud-top entrainment instability criteria discussed in the literature. It is suggested that enhanced entrainment of dry air is a key mechanism in the stratocumulus‐cumulus transition.

Large-Eddy Simulation: How Large is Large Enough?

The length scale evolution of various quantities in a clear convective boundary layer (CBL), a stratocumulustopped boundary layer, and three radiatively cooled (‘‘smoke cloud’’) convective boundary layers are studied by means of large-eddy simulations on a large horizontal domain (25.6 3 25.6 km2). In the CBL the virtual potential temperature and the vertical velocity fields are dominated by horizontal scales on the order of the boundary layer depth. In contrast, the potential temperature and the specific humidity fields become gradually dominated by mesoscale fluctuations. However, at the mesoscales their effects on the virtual potential temperature fluctuations nearly compensate. It is found that mesoscale fluctuations are negligibly small only for conserved variables that have an entrainment to surface flux ratio close to 20.25, which is about the flux ratio for the buoyancy. In the CBL the moisture and potential temperature flux ratios can have values that significantly deviate from this number. The geometry of the buoyancy flux was manipulated by cooling the clear convective boundary layer from the top, in addition to a positive buoyancy flux at the surface. For these radiatively cooled cases it is found that both the vertical velocity as well as the virtual potential temperature spectra tend to broaden. The role of the buoyancy flux in their respective prognostic variance equations is discussed. It is argued that in the upper part of the clear CBL, where the mean vertical stratification is stable, vertical velocity variance and virtual potential temperature variance cannot be produced simultaneously. For the stratocumulus case, in which latent heat release effects in the cloud layer play an important role in its dynamics, the field of any quantity, except for the vertical velocity, becomes dominated by mesoscale fluctuations. In general, the location of the spectral peak of any quantity becoming constrained by the domain size should be avoided. The answer to the question of how large the LES horizontal domain size should be in order to include mesoscale fluctuations will, on the one hand, depend on the type of convection to be simulated and the kind of physical question one aims to address, and, on the other hand, the time duration of the simulation. Only if one aims to study the dynamics of a dry CBL that excludes moisture, a rather small domain size suffices. In case one aims to examine either the spatial evolution of the fields of any arbitrary conserved scalar in the CBL, or any quantity in stratocumulus clouds except for the vertical velocity, a larger domain size that allows the development of mesoscale fluctuations will be necessary.

Turbulence, Radiation and fog in Dutch Stable Boundary Layers

The effect of longwave radiation on the structure the clear stable boundary layer (SBL) is examined. Special emphasis is given to radiative cooling near the surface and the top of the boundary layer and its impact on the heat flux profile. Further, the formation, growth and dissipation of fog in the SBL are studied both from observations and from a one-dimensional ensemble averaged turbulence closure model. The model is compared with detailed observations that were made for both a shallow (about 30 m) radiation fog and a deep (about 200 m) fog layer at the 200-m tower at Cabauw in the Netherlands. The model describes adequately the most important mechanisms occurring during the fog evolution. In this study special attention is given to the parameterization of the vegetation, which is important for a good representation of the (minimum) air temperature. The influence of turbulence transport, longwave radiative cooling and gravitational droplet settling on the fog evolution is described. The study demonstrates the need for more accurate measurements of turbulence quantities, especially the master length scale, in a variety of SBLs.

Microphysical and Turbulent Structure of Nocturnal Stratocumulus as Observed during ASTEX

Abstract Measurements of the microphysical and turbulence structure of stratocumulus made during the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment are presented. The measurements made from a C-130 aircraft, belonging to the Meteorological Research Flight, on the night of 12–13 June 1992 show that the convection in the boundary layer is driven both by longwave radiative cooling at cloud top and by the surface buoyancy flux. The turbulence kinetic energy budget, velocity and temperature variance, and vertical fluxes are calculated to discover how the turbulence structure varies with height. The vertical velocity variance profile is found to resemble that of a clear convective boundary layer. The entrainment velocity and entrainment fluxes are estimated. The results show that the entrainment is very efficient in the case studied. As a result, the buoyancy production of turbulent kinetic energy in the cloud layer is considerably reduced. Horizontally averaged droplet spectra are calculated to study the relativ...

The Contribution of Shear to the Evolution of a Convective Boundary Layer

The role of shear in the development and maintenance of a convective boundary layer is studied by means of observations and large eddy simulations (LESs). Particular emphasis is given to the growth of the boundary layer and to the way in which this growth is affected by surface fluxes of heat and moisture and entrainment fluxes. This paper analyzes the processes that drive the latter mechanism, which accounts for approximately 30% of the growth of the mixing layer. Typically, it is found that under pure convective conditions, without shear, the entrainment buoyancy flux at the inversion is about 220% of the surface buoyancy flux. This value is widely used for entrainment rate closures in general circulation models. The data collected during the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement campaign allow one to introduce realistic vertical profiles and surface fluxes into the LES runs and to compare the simulation results with the observed evolution of the boundary layer height during a convective situation with high entrainment rates and high geostrophic winds. The analysis of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget shows that the inclusion of geostrophic winds, which produce shear at the surface and in the entrainment zone, modifies the vertical profile of the various terms in the TKE budget. As a consequence, the entrainment flux is enhanced, resulting in increased growth of the boundary layer. The numerical experiments and the observations enable one to validate the efficiency of earlier representations, based on the TKE equation, which describe the evolution of the ratio between entrainment and surface buoyancy fluxes. The proposed parameterization for the entrainment and surface buoyancy flux ratio ( b), which includes the main buoyancy and shear contributions, is in good agreement with the LES results. Some aspects of the parameterization of b, for instance, the absence of entrainment flux and its behavior during the transition between convective to neutral conditions, are discussed.

Entrainment Parameterization in Convective Boundary Layers

Abstract Various runs were performed with a large eddy simulation (LES) model to evaluate different types of entrainment parametrizations. For this evaluation, three types of boundary layers were simulated: a clear convective boundary layer (CBL), a boundary layer containing a smoke concentration, and a cloud-topped boundary layer. It is shown that the assumption that the entrainment flux equals the product of the entrainment rate and the jump over a discontinuous inversion is not valid in CBLs simulated by an LES model. A finite inversion thickness (i.e., a first-order jump model) is needed to define an entrainment flux for which this approximation of the flux is valid. This entrainment flux includes not only the buoyancy flux at the inversion, but also the surface heat flux. The parameterization of the buoyancy flux at the inversion is evaluated for different closures, as suggested in the literature (i.e., Eulerian partitioning, process partitioning, and a closure developed by Deardorff), and where need...

Mesoscale Fluctuations in Scalars Generated by Boundary Layer Convection

Abstract This study has determined energy spectra of turbulent variables in large eddy simulations of the penetrating dry convective boundary layer (microscale convection). The simulated domain has a large aspect ratio, the horizontal size being roughly 16 times the boundary layer depth. It turns out that both the turbulent velocities and the potential temperature exhibit “classic” energy spectra, which means that the dominant contribution to the variance originates from a scale of the order of the boundary layer height. Surprisingly, the authors find that energy spectra of passive scalars in the convective boundary layer can behave completely differently from the velocity and temperature spectra. Depending on the boundary conditions of the scalar, that is, the surface flux and the entrainment flux, the spectrum is either classical in the aforementioned sense or it is dominated by the smallest wavenumbers, implying that the fluctuations are dominated by the largest scales. Loosely speaking the results can...

Size Distributions and Dynamical Properties of Shallow Cumulus Clouds from Aircraft Observations and Satellite Data

Abstract In this paper aircraft observations of shallow cumulus over Florida during the Small Cumulus Microphysics Study (SCMS) are analyzed. Size distributions of cloud fraction, mass flux, and in-cloud buoyancy flux are derived. These distributions provide information on the specific contribution of clouds with a certain horizontal size and reveal, for example, which size has the largest effect on cloud fraction or vertical transport. The analysis of four flights shows that the mass flux and buoyancy flux are dominated by intermediate-sized clouds (horizontal dimension of about 1 km). The cloud fraction, on the other hand, is found to be dominated by the smallest clouds observed. These clouds are additionally found to have a negative contribution to the mass flux, yet a positive contribution to the buoyancy flux. About 200 flight intersections of cumuli with horizontal sizes larger than 500 m are used to obtain average horizontal cross-section profiles of vertical velocity, liquid water content, liquid ...