The effect of mountainous topography on moisture exchange between the “surface” and the free atmosphere |
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Authors: | Andreas P Weigel Fotini K Chow Mathias W Rotach |
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Institution: | (1) Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, Zurich, Switzerland;(2) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, USA |
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Abstract: | Typical numerical weather and climate prediction models apply parameterizations to describe the subgrid-scale exchange of
moisture, heat and momentum between the surface and the free atmosphere. To a large degree, the underlying assumptions are
based on empirical knowledge obtained from measurements in the atmospheric boundary layer over flat and homogeneous topography.
It is, however, still unclear what happens if the topography is complex and steep. Not only is the applicability of classical
turbulence schemes questionable in principle over such terrain, but mountains additionally induce vertical fluxes on the meso-γ
scale. Examples are thermally or mechanically driven valley winds, which are neither resolved nor parameterized by climate
models but nevertheless contribute to vertical exchange. Attempts to quantify these processes and to evaluate their impact
on climate simulations have so far been scarce. Here, results from a case study in the Riviera Valley in southern Switzerland
are presented. In previous work, measurements from the MAP-Riviera field campaign have been used to evaluate and configure
a high-resolution large-eddy simulation code (ARPS). This model is here applied with a horizontal grid spacing of 350 m to
detect and quantify the relevant exchange processes between the valley atmosphere (i.e. the ground “surface” in a coarse model)
and the free atmosphere aloft. As an example, vertical export of moisture is evaluated for three fair-weather summer days.
The simulations show that moisture exchange with the free atmosphere is indeed no longer governed by turbulent motions alone.
Other mechanisms become important, such as mass export due to topographic narrowing or the interaction of thermally driven
cross-valley circulations. Under certain atmospheric conditions, these topographical-related mechanisms exceed the “classical”
turbulent contributions a coarse model would see by several times. The study shows that conventional subgrid-scale parameterizations
can indeed be far off from reality if applied over complex topography, and that large-eddy simulations could provide a helpful
tool for their improvement. |
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Keywords: | Large-eddy simulations Moisture fluxes Mountain meteorology Surface exchange |
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