Relationship between turbulent flux and variance in the urban canopy

The relationship between fluxes and variances has been widely studied in the frame of the similarity theory. However, the dynamics of urban morphology should be highlighted in the urban canopy. Therefore, the relationship between fluxes and variances of turbulent quantities (wind velocity, temperature, carbon dioxide, and water vapor concentration) without stability parameters has been investigated with data collected from the Beijing 325-m meteorological tower in the urban canopy. Though the similarity theory is available for the statistics of wind velocity and temperature, urban land use plays an important role in the linear relationship between momentum fluxes and velocity variances, while the linear relationship between sensible heat fluxes and temperature variances is influenced at large by stratification. As for carbon dioxide and water vapor, the linear relationship between their fluxes and variances is a better way compared to the similarity theory to describe their motion, though the plots are a little scattered owing to their fugitive source.     

A Study of Concentration Fluctuations in Instantaneous Clouds Dispersing in the Atmospheric Surface Layer for Relative Turbulent Diffusion: Basic Descriptive Statistics

A series of tracer experiments studying the statistical properties of concentration fluctuations in clouds dispersing in the atmospheric surface layer is described and analyzed. Experiments were conducted at downwind fetches between about 200 and 1200 m, under a wide range of atmospheric conditions ranging from very unstable to moderately stable stratification. The present experiments have addressed basic requirements not met by past field experiments involving instantaneously released clouds; namely, the experiments provided repeat realizations of instantaneously released clouds measured with high-resolution concentration detectors, accompanied by the contemporaneous acquisition of high-quality meteorological and turbulence measurements.Extensive analyses are performed on the cloud concentration data in the framework of relative diffusion. Ensembles of cloud concentration realizations have been constructed. From these ensembles, crosswind and time profiles of the ensemble-mean concentration, concentration variance, ensemble-mean dosage, and dosage variance are obtained. The behaviour of the time profiles of the integral time scale of cloud concentration fluctuations is studied. The use of surface-layer similarity theory for the analysis of the downwind variation of a number of cloud quantities (e.g., cloud size and duration, cloud centre ensemble-mean concentration and dosage, cloud centre concentration and dosage variance, cloud centre integral time scale) is shown to be an effective basis for ordering these quantities. Furthermore, a number of approximate universal relationships describing the behavior of these cloud quantities has been derived. Finally, it is shown that the scaled crosswind and time profiles of ensemble-mean concentration and concentration variance as well as the scaled time profiles of the concentration fluctuation integral time scale exhibit self-similar forms that are independent of atmospheric stratification and downwind fetch.     

南京地区气溶胶谱分布的湿度相关性分析和等效复折射率预测

通过实验收集大气颗粒物，对南京地区大气气溶胶谱分布进行了描述，对气溶胶分布与相对湿度的相关性进行了探讨。建立了南京地区7—11月气溶胶化学组分的月平均模型，得出气溶胶等效复折射率的预测方法。结果表明：南京地区的大气气溶胶颗粒物，峰值粒径在80~100 nm范围，属于典型的城市型气溶胶。数浓度与相对湿度的相关性与季节和粒径大小有关，在6—9月，相对湿度与细粒子数浓度呈负相关，与粗粒子呈正相关，在10—11月相反，且易受极端天气影响。建立的干气溶胶等效复折射率月平均模型，结合湿度修正模型得到某一日的复折射率，与AERONET站点数据进行了对比，结果较为一致，误差范围在0~0.03。     

Global stability for convection induced by absorption of radiation

We study the linear instability and nonlinear stability of a model, for convection induced by selective absorption of radiation, due to Krishnamurti. The nonlinear analysis yields critical Rayleigh numbers very close to the critical ones of linear instability theory and this demonstrates that linear theory effectively captures the physics of the onset of convection. Realistic boundary conditions appropriate to fixed surfaces are analysed and these reflect the experiments performed by Krishnamurti. The results obtained here lend much credence to use of the model of Krishnamurti for convection in a fluid layer stably stratified when the heat source depends on the concentration of the stratifying agent.     

Micromixing modelling of concentration fluctuations in inhomogeneous turbulence in the convective boundary layer

The micromixing technique, widely used in engineering calculations of mixing and chemical reaction, is extended to atmospheric boundary-layer flows. In particular, a model based on the interaction-by-exchange-with-the-conditional-mean (IECM) micromixing approach is formulated to calculate concentration fluctuation statistics for a line source and a point source in inhomogeneous and non-Gaussian turbulence in the convective boundary layer. The mixing time scale is parameterised as a linear function of time with the intercept value determined by the source size at small times. Good agreement with laboratory data for the intensity of concentration fluctuations is obtained with a value of 0.9 for the coefficient of the linear term in the time-scale parameterisation for a line source, and a value of 0.6 for a point source. Calculation of higher-order moments of the concentration field for a line source shows that non-Gaussian effects persist into the vertically well-mixed region. The cumulative distribution function predicted by the model for a point source agrees reasonably well with laboratory data, especially in the far field. In the limit of zero mixing time scale, the model reduces to a meandering plume model, thus enabling the concentration variance to be partitioned into meandering and relative components. The meandering component is shown to be more persistent for a point source than for a line source.     

Acceptance criteria for urban dispersion model evaluation

The authors suggested acceptance criteria for rural dispersion models’ performance measures in this journal in 2004. The current paper suggests modified values of acceptance criteria for urban applications and tests them with tracer data from four urban field experiments. For the arc-maximum concentrations, the fractional bias should have a magnitude <0.67 (i.e., the relative mean bias is less than a factor of 2); the normalized mean-square error should be <6 (i.e., the random scatter is less than about 2.4 times the mean); and the fraction of predictions that are within a factor of two of the observations (FAC2) should be >0.3. For all data paired in space, for which a threshold concentration must always be defined, the normalized absolute difference should be <0.50, when the threshold is three times the instrument’s limit of quantification (LOQ). An overall criterion is then applied that the total set of acceptance criteria should be satisfied in at least half of the field experiments. These acceptance criteria are applied to evaluations of the US Department of Defense’s Joint Effects Model (JEM) with tracer data from US urban field experiments in Salt Lake City (U2000), Oklahoma City (JU2003), and Manhattan (MSG05 and MID05). JEM includes the SCIPUFF dispersion model with the urban canopy option and the urban dispersion model (UDM) option. In each set of evaluations, three or four likely options are tested for meteorological inputs (e.g., a local building top wind speed, the closest National Weather Service airport observations, or outputs from numerical weather prediction models). It is found that, due to large natural variability in the urban data, there is not a large difference between the performance measures for the two model options and the three or four meteorological input options. The more detailed UDM and the state-of-the-art numerical weather models do provide a slight improvement over the other options. The proposed urban dispersion model acceptance criteria are satisfied at over half of the field experiments.     

Quantifying global climate feedbacks, responses and forcing under abrupt and gradual CO2 forcing

Experiments with abrupt CO₂ forcing allow the diagnosis of the response of global mean temperature and precipitation in terms of fast temperature independent adjustments and slow, linear temperature-dependent feedbacks. Here we compare responses, feedbacks and forcings in experiments performed as part of version 5 of the coupled model inter-comparison project (CMIP5). The experiments facilitate, for the first time, a comparison of fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (GCM’s) under both linearly increasing and abrupt radiative forcing. In the case of a 1 % per year compounded increase in CO₂ concentration, we find that the non-linear evolution of surface air temperature in time, when combined with the linear evolution of the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere, results in a feedback parameter and effective climate sensitivity having an offset compared to values computed from abrupt 4× CO₂ forcing experiments. The linear evolution of the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere also contributes to an offset between the global mean precipitation response predicted in the 1 % experiment using linear theory and that diagnosed from the experiments themselves, and a potential error between the adjusted radiative forcing and that produced using a standard linear formula. The non-linear evolution of temperature and precipitation responses are also evident in the RCP8.5 scenario and have implications for understanding, quantifying and emulating the global response of the CMIP5 climate GCMs.     

Heterogeneous Saltation: Theory, Observation and Comparison

In the theory of saltation, under development since the 1940s, it is often assumed that saltation is homogeneous, i.e., saltating particles are uniform in size and follow identical trajectories. This assumption is a limitation to the development of saltation theory. In this paper, as in some other studies made since the 1980s, we are concerned with the saltation of multi-sized particles in turbulent flows, a process that we refer to as heterogeneous saltation. The theory deals with several questions, including the variation of particle size distribution with height, the entrainment rates of particles in different size ranges, and the associated profiles of saltation flux, particle momentum flux and particle concentration. It is hypothesised that saltation is dynamically similar and ‘universal’ similarity functions can be established. The similarity function for saltation flux is presented. Field observations are carried out at the southern fringe of the Takla Makan Desert in April 2002. Measurements of streamwise saltation flux of 32 particle size groups are made using a sand particle counter, together with measurements of wind speed and other atmospheric variables. These data are used to validate the saltation theory, by examining whether the observed saltation flux and particle size distribution can be reproduced. It is shown that the theory is promising in predicting these quantities.     

大气气溶胶尺度分布分形特征研究

气溶胶作为大气环境中的重要组成部分,具有复杂的尺度分布结构。为研究其尺度分布特征,采用分形理论首先论述了常用的气溶胶谱分布函数具有分形不变性,然后在分形理论的指导下分别建立了气溶胶粒子和体积分形统计模型,而且以AERONET相关数据验证了分形模型的有效性和实用性,并采用分段分形的方法改进了气溶胶体积分形模型。最后分析研究了分维数的实用意义和分布情况,讨论了气溶胶分维数变化和粒度分布的关系。结果表明：气溶胶粒子数和体积分维数之间存在线性关系,上半年的大气溶胶粒子数分维数的变化幅度明显小于下半年的变化幅度;研究区域大气气溶胶中细粒子分布比较密集,大粒子分布比较分散。分形理论为研究大气气溶胶的尺度分布特征提供了新的方法与手段,具有广阔的研究与应用前景。     

基于线性约束最小方差对角加载的稳健频率不变波束形成算法

针对实际环境中因麦克风阵列失配误差导致宽带波束形成器性能下降的问题,提出基于线性约束最小方差对角加载的稳健频率不变波束形成算法.该算法首先在线性约束最小方差准则的基础上,结合空间响应偏差函数,并对波束形成器权矢量的二范数施加不等式约束,再通过拉格朗日乘子法和凸优化工具箱CVX(ConVeX)分别在不等约束条件下求得权矢量的解析解和全局最佳解,以有效解决麦克风的增益、相位和位置等的不确定性造成的失配误差问题,提高频率不变波束器的稳健性.仿真结果表明:采用拉格朗日乘子法求解该算法的最优权矢量所得到的波束形成器对失配误差最不敏感,性能最稳健.     

Steadily translating anticyclones on the beta plane

Approximately stationary anticyclones in shallow water on a rotating planet are studied both analytically and numerically. They consist of a monopolar part with large amplitude and a dipolar part with small amplitude, proportional to the beta parameter. An explicit solution for the dipolar part is o obtained with an arbitrary radial profile of the monopolar part. Numerical experiments show that this dipolar part accelerates or decelerates an initially circular vortex depending on the vortex size. The propagation speed is determined by a general integral relation. It is found that for the vortices to be stationary, this speed should not be close to the phase velocity of linear Rossby waves. This requires a strongly elevated surface (large amplitude). The vortices contain a core region with trapped fluid, unlike one-dimensional KdV solitons. Applications of the solution to long-lived geophysical eddies are discussed.     

Experimental study of the atmospheric marine boundary layer from in-situ aircraft measurements (TOSCANE-T Campaign): Variability of boundary conditions and eddy flux parameterization

The need for a thorough knowledge of boundary conditions over the vast oceanic surfaces makes remote sensing appear as the most suitable tool for future development. Remote sensing techniques require calibration data and consequently in-situ experiments to yield those data. Over the sea, aircraft seem to be the most convenient means of conducting validation experiments because they allow exploration of a large range of scales (from local measurements to measurements of pixel scale). This paper reports on some in-situ atmospheric aircraft measurements that were conducted as part of the TOSCANE-T experiment organized by the European Space Agency to calibrate the scatterometer for launch on ERS-1 in the early 1990's for global ocean wind measurement.The data analysed are the thermodynamic and turbulent variables measured by an instrumented aircraft, the Hurel Dubois, flying at a constant level of 50 m over the sea surface. Special attention was drawn to the variability of the boundary conditions within areas of 25 × 30 km. In fact, the two-dimensional fields of fluxes and thermodynamic parameters were inhomogeneous with some rather strong wind distortion.The eddy fluxes were parameterized with the aid of bulk aerodynamic formulations at a basic scale of 30 km samples, which corresponds to the aircraft flux computation legs. The bulk aerodynamic coefficients for momentum and heat were found to remain independent of windspeed (for wind velocities less than 12 m/s). Fluxes and thermodynamic parameters were also investigated at two other scales: the integration scale was either reduced to small areas of which size always remains larger than several characteristic lengths of turbulent transfer, or extended to a large area of 25 × 30km. The results of the bulk aerodynamic relationships appeared to be scale invariant, which would therefore justify the application of average values, within the range of scales under study.     

A search for evidence of critical internal wave reflection on the continental rise and slope off Nova Scotia

Abstract

According to linear inviscid theory, the reflection of internal waves off a uniformly sloping bottom should lead to greatly enhanced energy density, and a cross‐isobath alignment of motions, near the critical frequency ω_c for which the wave ray slope equals the bottom slope. Current‐meter data from the continental rise and slope off Nova Scotia are used to test this hypothesis. Near‐bottom energy enhancement at ω_c was found to be significant at the 95% level for 8 out of 30 tests performed, whereas cross‐isobath alignment of motions near ω_c was significant at the 95% level for 10 out of 15 tests performed. Some aspects of the observations that appear to be consistent with non‐linear reflection theory are briefly discussed.     

中尺度扰动不稳定的数值研究

利用一个二维Boussinesq流体的绝热无粘非静力数值模式,将中尺度不稳定问题作为一个初值问题进行数值研究.线性情况下数值试验的结果基本与采用特征值方法研究得到的结论一致.非线性情况的数值试验表明,其不稳定发生的范围可与线性情况不一致;非线性不稳定的增长率一般较线性不稳定的增长率要小;非线性作用会造成波型的陡凸,从而造成流函数正负环流的不对称和环流流线的密集;非线性情形下的流型有些与强对流系统的流型相像.     

Charging state of atmospheric nanoparticles during the nucleation burst events

In this work, the charging state of atmospheric nanoparticles was estimated through simultaneous measurements of aerosol size distribution and air ions mobility distribution with the aim to elucidate the formation mechanisms of atmospheric aerosols. The measurements were performed as a part of the QUEST 2 campaign at a boreal forest station in Finland. The overlapping part of the measurement ranges of the particle size spectrometers and air ion mobility spectrometers in the mass diameter interval of 2.6–40 nm was used to assess the percentage of charged particles (charging probability). This parameter was obtained as the slope of the linear regression line on the scatterplot of the measured concentrations of total (neutral + charged) and charged particles for the same diameter interval. Charging probabilities as a function of particle diameter were calculated for different days and were compared with the steady state charging probabilities of the particles in the bipolar ion atmosphere. For the smallest particles detectable by the particle size spectrometers (2.6–5 nm), the high percentages of negatively charged particles were found during the nanometer particle concentration bursts. These values considerably exceeded the values for the steady charging state and it was concluded that negative cluster ions preferably act as condensation nuclei. This effect was found to be the highest in the case of comparatively weak nucleation bursts of nanoparticles, when the rate of the homogeneous nucleation and the concentration of freshly nucleated particles were low. The nucleation burst days were classified according to the concentration of the generated smallest detectable new particles (weak and strong bursts). Approximately the same classification was obtained based on the charge asymmetry on particles with respect to the charge sign (polarity). The probabilities of negative and positive charge on the particles with the diameter of 5–20 nm were found to be nearly equal and they approximately agree with the values corresponding to the steady state charge distribution for negative particles known from lab experiments. It means that the steady charging state was reached during the growing time of particles up to 5 nm. The natural charging state of particles with a diameter between 2.5 and 4.5 nm was estimated by means of a special DMPS setup. Results were found to be in good correlation with the data by the particle size spectrometers and air ion mobility spectrometers.     

Relationships between higher moments of concentration and of dose in turbulent dispersion

Chatwin and Sullivan (1990) proposed simple results for the relationships between moments of scalar fluctuations in self-similar turbulent shear flows. They showed these relationships to be well satisfied by observations from a range of experiments. Here their theory is extended to the skewness, kurtosis and higher order equivalents. It is shown that the relationships between these normalised moments are parameter-free, and are identical to those for zero molecular diffusion. Experimental observations are presented which show a remarkable degree of collapse when these normalised moments are plotted against each other. The agreement with the theoretical results is reasonably good, and better than for some other standard statistical distributions which are commonly applied to such observations. This is true not only for the concentration, but also for generalised doses. It is concluded that the simple theory provides a satisfactory basis for a model of both the concentration and of dose. Furthermore, the results suggest that the concentration and the dose can be modelled through a perturbation to a two-state model.     

The effect of aerosol representation on cloud microphysical properties in Northeast Asia

This study performed a three-dimensional regional-scale simulation of aerosol and cloud fields using a meso-scale non-hydrostatic model with a bin-based cloud microphysics. The representation of aerosols in the model has been improved to account for more realistic multi-modal size distribution and multiple chemical compositions. Two case studies for shallow stratocumulus over Northeast Asia in March 2005 were conducted with different aerosol conditions to evaluate model performance. Improved condensation nuclei (CN) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are attributable to the newly constructed aerosol size distribution. The simulated results of cloud microphysical properties (cloud droplet effective radius, liquid water path, and optical thickness) with improved CN/CCN number are close to the retrievals from satellite-based observation. The effects of aerosol on the microphysical properties of shallow stratocumulus are investigated by model simulation, in terms of columnar aerosol number concentration. Enhanced aerosol number concentration results in increased liquid water path in humid case, but invariant liquid water path in dry case primarily due to precipitation occurrence. The changes of cloud microphysical properties are more predominant for small aerosol burden than for large aerosol burden with the retarded changes in cloud mass and size due to inactive condensation and collision-coalescence processes. Quantitative evaluation of sensitivity factor between aerosol and cloud microphysical properties indicates a strong aerosol-cloud interaction in Northeast Asian region.     

World-wide increase in tropospheric methane, 1978–1983

Tropospheric concentrations of methane in remote locations have averaged a yearly world-wide increase of 0.018±0.002 parts per million by volume (ppmv) during the period from January 1978 to December 1983. The concentrations in the north temperate zone are always greater than those in the south temperate zone by 7±1% because the major methane sources are all predominantly located in the northern hemisphere. The average world-wide tropospheric concentration of methane in dry air was 1.625 ppmv at the end of 1983, measured against an NBS standard certified as 0.97 ppmv (but with an accuracy of only ±1%). The world-wide concentration increases are described by a linear equation with a standard deviation of 0.003 ppmv for ten different collection periods during 1978–1983. The precision of measurement of the methane concentration in the atmospheric samples and in the standard was measured to be ±0.4% for each. Repetitive measurements of an air sample collected in November 1977 have shown the same concentration for six years with a standard deviation for these data of ±0.003 ppmv.The causes for the steady increase in methane concentration in the troposphere cannot be fixed with certainty from present data. Contributing causes can include increases in the source strengths from cattle and rice fields. The atmospheric concentrations of CO, CH₄ and HO are all closely coupled with one another, and increased concentrations of CO and/or CH₄ should cause reduced concentrations of HO, which in turn should lengthen the atmospheric lifetimes of CO and CH₄.Among other physical and chemical effects, a increase of 0.18 ppmv per decade should contribute a greenhouse warming of about 0.04°C per decade. Other secondary contributions to the greenhouse effect from increases in CH₄ may arise from methane-induced increases in stratospheric H₂O, in tropospheric O₃, and in numerous other trace species whose concentration is controlled by reaction with HO radicals.An increased CH₄ source strength may result from the effect of increasing atmospheric temperatures on the known aqueous biological CH₄ sources, such as swamps, and may be an added consequence of the greenhouse effect.     

Surface pressure distribution and pressure drag on mountains

Summary A mesoscale numerical model is used to compute the different components of the pressure drag on mountains, i.e.: form drag, wave drag, hydrostatic drag, and total pressure drag, for stable stratification. The Froude number is chosen so that non-breaking lee-waves evolve.The paper explains how the different parts of the drag are computed from the numerical results and how they form part of the horizontal momentum budget.For a single mountain the drag from the evolving stationary solution is compared to the wave drag from linear inviscid theory. Wave drag turns out to be about one third of the value expected from linear theory, and nonlinear interaction between wave and form drag is found. Wave drag is responsible for about 75% of the total drag if blocking is negligible.For two obstacles with varying distance the wave drag in the stationary solution varies between 5% and 30% of the value from linear theory due to partial cancellation between the lee-waves from the two mountains.Finally in an instationary simulation the passage of a cold air mass over a mountain and the respective drag components have been computed. 1500 m above the crestline of the obstacle wave drag is only 10% to 30% of the total drag.From the present results it seems realistic that wave drag from ALPEX experimental data was only a few percent of the value expected from the surface pressure distribution and from linear theory.With 7 Figures