Surface Layer Turbulence During a Frontal Passage [electronic resource].

Published: Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy, 2004.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Physical Description: PDF-file: 8 pages; size: 0.4 Mbytes
Additional Creators: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States. Department of Energy, and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information

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Summary

Some recent investigations have begun to quantify turbulence and dissipation in frontal zones to address the question of what physical mechanism counteracts the intensification of temperature and velocity gradients across a developing front. Frank (1994) examines the turbulence structure of two fronts that passed a 200m instrumented tower near Karlsruhe, Germany. In addition to showing the mean vertical structure of the fronts as they pass the tower, Frank demonstrates that there is an order of magnitude or more increase in turbulent kinetic energy across the frontal zone. Blumen and Piper (1999) reported turbulence statistics, including dissipation rate measurements, from the MICROFRONTS field experiment, where high-frequency turbulence data were collected from tower-mounted hotwire and sonic anemometers in a cold front and in a density current. Chapman and Browning (2001) measured dissipation rate in a precipitating frontal zone with high-resolution Doppler radar. Their measurements were conducted above the surface layer, to heights of 5km. The dissipation rate values they found are comparable to those measured in Kennedy and Shapiro (1975) in an upper-level front. Here, we expand on these recent studies by depicting the behavior of the fine scales of turbulence near the surface in a frontal zone. The primary objective of this study is to quantify the levels of turbulence and dissipation occurring in a frontal zone through the calculation of kinetic energy spectra and dissipation rates. The high-resolution turbulence data used in this study are taken during the cold front that passed the MICROFRONTS site in the early evening hours of 20 March 1995. These new measurements can be used as a basis for parameterizing the effects of surface-layer turbulence in numerical models of frontogenesis. We present three techniques for calculating the dissipation rate: direct dissipation technique, inertial dissipation technique and Kolmogorov's four-fifths law. Dissipation rate calculations using these techniques are employed using data from both the sonic and hotwire anemometers, when possible. Unfortunately, direct calculations of {var_epsilon} were not possible during a part of the frontal passage because the high wind speeds concurrent with the frontal passage demand very high frequency resolution, beyond that possible with the hotwire anemometer, for direct {var_epsilon} calculations. The calculations resulting from these three techniques are presented for the cold front as a time series. Quantitative comparisons of the direct and indirect calculation techniques are also given. More detail, as well as a discussion of energy spectra, can be found in Piper & Lundquist(2004).

Report Numbers

E 1.99:ucrl-conf-204833
ucrl-conf-204833

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Published through SciTech Connect.
06/15/2004.
"ucrl-conf-204833"
Presented at: 16th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence, Portland, ME, United States, Aug 09 - Aug 13, 2004.
Lundquist, J K; Piper, M.

Funding Information

W-7405-ENG-48

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