Project overview
This project aims to systematically revise the
planetary-boundary-layer (PBL) physics accounting for the non-local effects of
coherent structures (long-lived large eddies especially pronounced in
convective PBLs and internal waves in stable PBLs). It focuses on the key
physical problems related to the role of PBLs in the Earth system as the
atmosphere-land/ocean/biosphere coupling modules:
- the
resistance and heat/mass transfer laws determining the near-surface
turbulent fluxes,
- the
entrainment laws determining the fluxes at the PBL outer boundary,
- the
PBL depth equations, and
- turbulence
closures.
In this project the first round of revision
will be completed, the advanced concepts/models will be empirically validated
and employed to develop new PBL parameterization for use in meteorological
modelling and analyses of the climate and Earth system. The new
parameterizations and closures will be implemented in state-of-the-art
numerical weather prediction, climate, meso-scale and air-pollution models;
evaluated through case studies and statistical analyses of the quality of
forecasts/simulations; and applied to a range of environmental problems. By
this means the project will contribute to better modelling of extreme weather
events, heavy air pollution episodes, and fine features of climate change.
The new physical concepts and models will be
included in the university course and new textbook on PBL physics. This project
summarises and further extends our last-decade works in the PBL physics:
discovery and the theory of the new PBL types of essentially non-local nature:
“long-lived stable” and “conventionally neutral”; quantification of the basic
effects of coherent eddies in the shear-free convective PBLs including the
non-local heat-transfer law; physical solution to the turbulence cut off
problem in the closure models for stable stratification; and discovery of the
stability dependences of the roughness length and displacement height.
Figure 1.
The physics of the planetary-boundary-layer (PBL).