The Effect of Surface Heterogeneity on the Structure Parameters of Temperature and Specific Humidity: A Large-Eddy Simulation Case Study for the LITFASS-2003 Experiment
Creators: name: Maronga, Björn
name: Hartogensis, Oscar K.
name: Raasch, Siegfried
name: Beyrich, Frank
Publisher: name: Berlin : Kluwer Academic Publishers
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: Convective boundary layer
subject: Large-eddy simulation
subject: Scintillometry
subject: Surface heterogeneity
subject: Turbulent structure parameter
subject: Air entrainment
subject: Blending
subject: Boundary layer flow
subject: Boundary layers
subject: Experiments
subject: Heat flux
subject: Land use
subject: Latent heat
subject: Scintillation
subject: Surface measurement
subject: Surface properties
subject: Convective boundary layers
subject: Potential temperature
subject: Structure parameter
subject: Surface heterogeneities
subject: Turbulent structures
subject: Twodimensional correlation analysis
subject: convective boundary layer
subject: humidity
subject: latent heat flux
subject: potential temperature
subject: sensible heat flux
subject: turbulence
subject: Dewey Decimal Classification::500 | Naturwissenschaften

description: We conduct a high-resolution large-eddy simulation (LES) case study in order to investigate the effects of surface heterogeneity on the (local) structure parameters of potential temperature CT 2 and specific humidity Cq 2 in the convective boundary layer (CBL). The kilometre-scale heterogeneous land-use distribution as observed during the LITFASS-2003 experiment was prescribed at the surface of the LES model in order to simulate a realistic CBL development from the early morning until early afternoon. The surface patches are irregularly distributed and represent different land-use types that exhibit different roughness conditions as well as near-surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat. In the analysis, particular attention is given to the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (MOST) relationships and local free convection (LFC) scaling for structure parameters in the surface layer, relating CT 2 and Cq 2 to the surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat, respectively. Moreover we study possible effects of surface heterogeneity on scintillometer measurements that are usually performed in the surface layer. The LES data show that the local structure parameters reflect the surface heterogeneity pattern up to heights of 100-200 m. The assumption of a blending height, i.e. the height above the surface where the surface heterogeneity pattern is no longer visible in the structure parameters, is studied by means of a two-dimensional correlation analysis. We show that no such blending height is found at typical heights of scintillometer measurements for the studied case. Moreover, Cq 2 does not follow MOST, which is ascribed to the entrainment of dry air at the top of the boundary layer. The application of MOST and LFC scaling to elevated CT 2 data still gives reliable estimates of the surface sensible heat flux. We show, however, that this flux, derived from scintillometer data, is only representative of the footprint area of the scintillometer, whose size depends strongly on the synoptic conditions.