Buoyancy reversal in cloud-top mixing layers

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society

Volumn 135, Issue 641, 2009, Pages 963-978

  Mellado, Juan Pedro ^a   Stevens, Bjorn ^b,c   Schmidt, Heiko ^d   Peters, Norbert ^a  

^a RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^c MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR METEOROLOGY   (Germany)

^d FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN   (Germany)

Author keywords

Buoyancy reversal instability; Free convection; Free turbulent flows; Stratocumulus

Indexed keywords

CLOUD-TOP MIXING; EVAPORATIVE COOLING; FREE CONVECTION; FREE TURBULENT FLOWS; HIGH-ORDER; HORIZONTAL LAYERS; LOW LEVEL; MIXTURE FRACTION; NUMERICAL ALGORITHMS; SINGLE MODE; STRATOCUMULUS; STRATOCUMULUS CLOUDS; STRATOCUMULUS-TOPPED BOUNDARY LAYERS; TIME-SCALES; TURBULENT ENTRAINMENT; TURBULENT MIXING; TWO-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATIONS; UNSTABLE MODES;

BUOYANCY; CLOUDS; COMPUTER SIMULATION; EVAPORATION; EVAPORATIVE COOLING SYSTEMS; FLOW PATTERNS; LINEAR STABILITY ANALYSIS; NATURAL CONVECTION; SYSTEM STABILITY; TURBULENT FLOW;

COOLING;

ALGORITHM; BOUNDARY LAYER; PERTURBATION; SIMULATION; STABILITY ANALYSIS; STRATOCUMULUS; TURBULENT FLOW;

EID: 70149104004     PISSN: 00359009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/qj.417     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Burke SP, Schumann TEW. 1928. Diffusion flames. Ind. Eng. Chem. 20: 998-1004.
2. Caughey SJ, Crease BA, Roach WT. 1982. A field study of nocturnal stratocumulus. II: Turbulence structure and entrainment. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 108: 125-144.
3. Cook AW, Dimotakis PE. 2001. Transition stages of Rayleigh-Taylor instability between miscible fluids. J. Fluid Mech. 443: 69-99.
4. Corrsin S, Kistler A. 1955. 'Free-stream boundaries of turbulent flows'. Technical Repor. 1244. NACA: Washington DC.
5. Deardorff JW. 1980. Cloud top entrainment instability. J. Atmos. Sci. 37: 131-147.
6. Dimotakis PE. 2005. Turbulent mixing. Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 37: 329-356.
7. Fernando HJS. 1991. Turbulent mixing in stratified fluids. Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 23: 455-493.
8. Flatau PJ, Walko RL, Cotton WR. 1992. Polynomial fits to saturation vapor pressure. J. Appl. Meteorol. 31: 1507.
9. Grabowski WW. 1995. Entrainment and mixing in buoyancy-reversing convection with applications to cloud-top entrainment instability. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 121: 231-253.
10. Gresho PM. 1991. Incompressible fluid dynamics: some fundamental formulation issues. Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 23: 413-453.
11. Hunt JCR, Eames I, Westerweel J. 2006. Mechanics of inhomogeneous turbulence and interfacial layers. J. Fluid Mech. 554: 499-519.
12. Jacobs JW, Dalziel SB. 2005. Rayleigh-Taylor instability in complex stratifications. J. Fluid Mech. 542: 251-279.
13. Kuo H, Schubert WH. 1988. Stability of cloud-topped boundary layers. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 114: 887-916.
14. Lele SK. 1992. Compact finite difference schemes with spectral-like resolution. J. Comput. Phys. 103: 16-42.
15. Lilly DK. 1968. Models of cloud-topped mixed layers under strong inversion. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 94: 292-309.
16. Lilly DK. 1996. A comparison of incompressible, anelastic and Boussinesq dynamics. Atmos. Res. 40: 143-151.
17. Mehta AP, Sutherland BR, Kyba PJ. 2002. Interfacial gravity currents. II: Wave excitation. Phys. Fluids 14: 3558-3569.
18. Mellado JP, Sarkar S, Zhou Y. 2005. Large-eddy simulation of Rayleigh-Taylor turbulence with compressible miscible fluids. Phys. Fluids 17: 76-101.
19. Mellado JP, Wang L, Peters N. 2009. Gradient trajectory analysis of a scalar field with external intermittency. J. Fluid Mech. in press.
20. Pantano C, Sarkar S, Williams FA. 2003. Mixing of a conserved scalar in a turbulent reacting shear layer. J. Fluid Mech. 481: 291-328.
21. Peltier WR, Caulfield CP. 2003. Mixing efficiency in stratified shear flows. Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 35: 135-167.
22. Peters N. 2000. Turbulent combustion. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.
23. Ramaprabhu P, Andrews MJ. 2004. Experimental investigation of Rayleigh-Taylor mixing at small Atwood numbers. J. Fluid Mech. 502: 233-271.
24. Randall DA. 1980. Conditional instability of the first kind upside-down. J. Atmos. Sci. 37: 125-130.
25. Sharp DH. 1984. An overview of Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Physica D 12: 3-18.
26. Shy SS, Breidenthal RE. 1990. Laboratory experiments on the cloud-top entrainment instability. J. Fluid Mech. 214: 1-15.
27. Siems ST, Bretherton CS. 1992. A numerical investigation of cloud-top entrainment instability and related experiments. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 118: 787-818.
28. Siems ST, Bretherton CS, Baker MB, Shy S, Breidenthal RE. 1990. Buoyancy reversal and cloud-top entrainment instability. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 116: 705-739.
29. Stevens B. 2002. Entrainment in stratocumulus-topped mixed layers. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 128: 2663-2690.
30. Stevens B, Lenschow DH, Faloona I, Moeng CH, Lilly DK, Blomquist B, Vali G, Bandy A, Campos T, Gerber H, Haimov S, Morley B, Thorton C. 2003. On entrainment rates in nocturnal marine stratocumulus. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 129: 3469-3493.
31. Sutherland BR. 2002. Interfacial gravity currents. I: Mixing and entrainment. Phys. Fluids 14: 2244-2254.
32. Tritton DJ. 1988. Physical fluid dynamics. Oxford Science Publications.
33. Turner JS. 1973. Buoyancy effects in fluids. Cambridge University Press.
34. Williamson JH. 1980. Low-storage Runge-Kutta schemes. J. Comput. Phys. 35: 48-56.
35. Wilson RV, Demuren AO, Carpenter M. 1998.'Higher-order compact schemes for numerical simulation of incompressible flows'. Technical Report CR-1998-206922, NASA Langley Research Center: Springfield, Virginia, USA.
36. Winters KB, Lombard PN, Riley JJ, D'Asaro EA. 1995. Available potential energy and mixing in density-stratified fluids. J. Fluid Mech. 289: 115-128.
37. Wunsch S. 2003. Stochastic simulations of buoyancy reversal experiments. Phys. Fluids 15: 1442-1456.
38. Yamaguchi T, Randall DA. 2008. Large-eddy simulation of evaporatively driven entrainment in cloud-topped mixed layers. J. Atmos. Sci. 65: 1481-1504.
39. Yang Y, Zhang Q. 1993. General properties of a multilayer stratified fluids systems. Phys. Fluids A 5: 1167-1181.