You are here:
Ending the half-a-century monopoly of similarity functions in the boundary layer modeling
Citation:
Alapaty, Kiran, J. Bash, R. Gilliam, C. Hogrefe, B. Henderson, D. Kang, B. Cheng, Chris Nolte, S. Arunachalam, AND A. Vette. Ending the half-a-century monopoly of similarity functions in the boundary layer modeling. Meteorology and Climate - Modeling for Air Quality Conference, near Sacramento, CA, September 13 - 15, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
A new paradigm for surface and boundayr layer modeling is developed.This new development can help both the meteorology and air quality models across scientific communities and reduce differences among the models.
Description:
From the past half century to present, similarity profiles are being widely used as universal functions in surface layer modeling. In a way, proliferation has contributed to development of several surface and boundary layer formulations and in part to differences in the outcomes among different 3-D atmospheric models. On the other hand, 0-D (box) models that are driven by field-scale measurements don’t need to use such functions since such measurements provide natural variability of atmosphere. But one need to use similarity functions to accurately model predictions of boundary layer evolution and associated processes in 3-D models. Thus, 0-D and 3-D models’ formulations differ in representing boundary layer processes. To address these issues, we developed a seamless universal formulation for use in 0-D as well as 3-D atmospheric models. This innovative methodology avoids the usage of similarity functions and can unify all types of models has been tested and validated using measurements and meteorological and air quality models. The basis of the new methodology is the development of a 3-D turbulence velocity scale founded on the surface turbulence kinetic energy and its validation using field scale measurements. Preliminary results obtained from using all these models unanimously indicate that there is no need for using similarity functions when representing boundary layer processes and yet these new formulations are as accurate as those using similarity functions.