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Nesting Turbulence in an Offshore Convective Boundary Layer Using Large-Eddy Simulations

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Abstract

The applicability of the one-way nesting technique for numerical simulations of the heterogeneous atmospheric boundary layer using the large-eddy simulation (LES) framework of the Weather Research and Forecasting model is investigated. The focus of this study is on LES of offshore convective boundary layers. Simulations were carried out using two subgrid-scale models (linear and non-linear) with two different closures [diagnostic and prognostic subgrid-scale turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) equations]. We found that the non-linear backscatter and anisotropy model with a prognostic subgrid-scale TKE equation is capable of providing similar results when performing one-way nested LES to a stand-alone domain having the same grid resolution but using periodic lateral boundary conditions. A good agreement is obtained in terms of velocity shear and turbulent fluxes, while velocity variances are overestimated. A streamwise fetch of 14 km is needed following each domain transition in order for the solution to reach quasi-stationary results and for the velocity spectra to generate proper energy content at high wavelengths, however, a pile-up of energy is observed at the low-wavelength portion of the spectrum on the first nested domain. The inclusion of a second nest with higher resolution allows the solution to reach effective grid spacing well within the Kolmogorov inertial subrange of turbulence and develop an appropriate energy cascade that eliminates most of the pile-up of energy at low wavelengths. Consequently, the overestimation of velocity variances is substantially reduced and a considerably better agreement with respect to the stand-alone domain results is achieved.

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Acknowledgments

DME wants to thank the support from the Marie Curie FP7-ITN-WAUDIT Project # 238576, which partially funded this research. All the numerical simulations were performed using the Supercomputing facilities of the von Karman Institute. The authors are very thankful to Dr. Beatriz Cañadillas for her help with the FINO1 data that was used to initialize the computations. We also thank the Deutsches Windenergie Institut (DEWI) for providing the offshore field measurements from the FINO1 platform. We acknowledge our two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful reviews that improved the quality of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, Rhode-St-Genèse, Belgium

    Domingo Muñoz-Esparza, Clara García-Sánchez & Jeroen van Beeck

  2. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    Branko Kosović

Authors
  1. Domingo Muñoz-Esparza
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  2. Branko Kosović
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  3. Clara García-Sánchez
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  4. Jeroen van Beeck
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Correspondence to Domingo Muñoz-Esparza.

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Muñoz-Esparza, D., Kosović, B., García-Sánchez, C. et al. Nesting Turbulence in an Offshore Convective Boundary Layer Using Large-Eddy Simulations. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 151, 453–478 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-014-9911-9

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