Boundary-Layer Adjustment Over Small-Scale Changes of Surface Heat Flux |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">L?MahrtEmail author Dean?Vickers |
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Institution: | (1) College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA |
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Abstract: | Four months of eddy correlation data collected over a grass field and a nearby sage brush community are analyzed to examine
the adjustment of the boundary-layer structure as it flows from the heated brush to the snow-covered grass. The grass site
includes a 34-m tower with seven levels of eddy correlation data. The midday heat flux over the snow-covered grass and bare
ground surfaces is often downward particularly with melting conditions, while the corresponding heat flux over the brush is
almost always upward. For most of these cases, a stable internal boundary layer over the snow is well defined in terms of
vertical profiles of the buoyancy flux over the snow-covered grass. The stable internal boundary layer is generally embedded
within a deeper layer of flux divergence corresponding to increasing upward heat flux with height above the internal boundary
layer. With thin snow cover, the surface heat flux over the grass is weak upward due to heating of grass protruding above
the snow so that the flow adjusts to a decrease of the upward surface heat flux in the downwind direction. This common case
of an adjusting boundary layer contrasts with the formation of an internal boundary layer due to a change of sign of the surface
heat in flux the downwind direction. The adjustment of the boundary layer to the decrease of the surface heat flux leads to
vertical divergence of the upward heat flux in contrast to the usual heated boundary layer over homogeneous surfaces. The
consequences of the cooling due to the vertical divergence of the heat flux are discussed in terms of the heat budget of the
adjusting and internal boundary layers. |
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Keywords: | Advection Heterogeneity Internal boundary layer Snow cover Stable boundary layer |
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