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SURFACE-LAYER SCALING FOR THE CONVECTION-INDUCED STRESS REGIME

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Abstract

The Prandtl, Obukhov, and Monin andObukhov similarity theories are widely used todescribe the structure of turbulence in theatmospheric surface layer. Currently it isunderstood that in strong convection with no or veryweak mean wind the traditional theory breaks down.In particular, the traditional theory implies asingle-valued correspondence between localturbulence statistics and local properties ofthe flow. In very strong convection, this is nottrue because of large-scale (∼ 10 3 m) coherentstructures, embracing the entire convective boundarylayer (CBL). These structures produce random guststhat crucially affect surface-layer turbulence andmake it dependent on global properties of theflow, such as the CBL depth. In the present paperthe limits of validity of the traditional surface-layer similarity theory are determined and a revisedtheory of fair weather convection in the surface layeris developed by considering the effect of gustiness. It is shownthat the theoretical predictions are consistent withfield data from the TOGA COARE and SCOPEexperiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pyzhevsky 3, Moscow, 109017, Russia

    A. A. GRACHEV & S. S. ZILITINKEVICH

  2. NOAA/ERL/ETL, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO, 80303-3328, U.S.A

    C. W. FAIRALL

  3. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570, Bremerhaven, Germany

    S. S. ZILITINKEVICH

  4. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstr. 55, 20146, Hamburg, Germany

    S. S. ZILITINKEVICH

Authors
  1. A. A. GRACHEV
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  2. C. W. FAIRALL
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  3. S. S. ZILITINKEVICH
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GRACHEV, A.A., FAIRALL, C.W. & ZILITINKEVICH, S.S. SURFACE-LAYER SCALING FOR THE CONVECTION-INDUCED STRESS REGIME. Boundary-Layer Meteorology 83, 423–439 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1000281625985

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