GRADIENT-DIFFUSION CLOSURE AND THE EJECTION-SWEEP CYCLE IN CONVECTIVE BOUNDARY LAYERS

The inadequacy of conventional gradient-diffusion closure in modeling turbulent heat flux within the convective atmospheric boundary-layer is often alleviated by accounting for nonlocal transport. Such nonlocal effects are a manifestation of the inherent asymmetry in vertical transport in the convective boundary layer, which is in turn associated with third-order moments (skewness and fluxes of fluxes). In this work, the role of these third-order moments in second-order turbulence closure of the sensible heat flux is examined with the goal of reconciling the models to various closure assumptions. Surface layer similarity theory and mixed-layer parametrizations are used here, complemented by LES results when needed. The turbulent heat flux with various closure assumptions of the flux transport term is solved, including both local and nonlocal approaches. We connect to ejection-sweep cycles in the flow field using the GramCharlier cumulant expansion of the joint probability distribution of vertical velocity and potential temperature. In this nonlocal closure, the transport asymmetry models that include the vertical velocity skewness as a correction term to H originate from ejection-sweep events. Vertical inhomogeneity results in a modified-skewness correction to the nonlocal contribution to the heat flux associated with the relative intensity of ejections and sweeps.

Duke Scholars

Author Gabriel G. Katul Civil and Environmental Engineering