What is the smallest physically acceptable scale for 1D turbulence schemes?

In numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, at mesoscale, the subgrid convective boundary-layer turbulence is dominated by the uni-directional (1D) vertical thermal production. In Large-Eddy Simulations (LES), the thermal plumes are resolved and the residual subgrid turbulent motions are homogeneous and isotropic, thus three-dimensional (3D), resulting from the dynamical production.This article sets the critical horizontal resolution for which the usually 1D turbulence schemes of NWP models must be replaced by 3D turbulence schemes. LES from five dry and cumulus-topped free convective boundary layers and one forced convective boundary layer are performed. From these LES data, the thermal production and vertical and horizontal dynamicalproductions are calculated at several resolutions from LES to mesoscale. It appears that the production terms of both dry and cumulus-topped free convective boundary layers have the same behavior. A pattern emerges whenever data are ranked by the resolution scaled by the size of thermal plumes, (h + hc , where h is the boundary-layer height and hc is the depth of the cloud layer). In free onvective boundary layers, the critical horizontal resolution for which the horizontal motions must be represented is 0.5(h + hc ). However, the critical horizontal resolution in the forced convective boundary layer case is 3(h + hc )

Quelle turbulence dans les modèles atmosphériques à l'échelle kilométrique ?

A Météo France, le modèle opérationnel AROME a une résolution horizontale de 2,5 km. L'augmentation des moyens de calcul permettra au prochain modèle opérationnel de tourner à des résolutions de l'ordre ou inférieures au kilomètre. Il entrera donc dans une gamme de résolution appelée zone grise de la turbulence. A ces échelles, les plus grandes structures turbulentes, qui étaient jusqu'alors entièrement sous-maille, devraient être en partie résolues. Cette thèse a permis de définir ce que les modèles devaient obtenir aux échelles kilométriques et sub-kilométriques, c'est-à-dire les parts sous-maille et résolue de référence de la turbulence dans la zone grise. Ces références ont été établies dans le cas de couches limites convectives en convection libre ou forcée, nuageuse ou non. Elles permettent de prouver qu'à hauteur de couche limite égale, les thermiques sont plus larges dans les couches surmontées de nuages. Elles indiquent surtout que, quelle que soit la configuration, les paramétrisations actuelles ne sont pas capables de reproduire la zone grise. Ces échelles demandent donc de développer une nouvelle paramétrisation de la turbulence. La représentation de la turbulence non locale est la part qu'il faut faire évoluer. Nous avons donc pris le parti de modifier le schéma de thermique en flux de masse. Pour étudier les structures cohérentes sous-maille de couche limite, nous avons créé une analyse conditionnelle permettant de circonscrire la part de thermique qui influence le schéma sous-maille en fonction de la résolution. Cet outil nous a permis de définir les caractéristiques des thermiques sous-maille dans la zone grise, mais également de vérifier à micro-échelle les hypothèses de méso-échelle des schémas en flux de masse. Nous avons démontré que toutes les hypothèses ne sont pas valables. Finalement nous avons établi le système d'équations d'un schéma en flux de masse qui fonctionne aux échelles kilométriques. ABSTRACT : The turbulence is well-represented on grid coarser than 2 km. Indeed, in meso-scale models, the turbulence is entirely sub-grid. The turbulence is also well-represented at very high resolution (10 to 100 m) by LES models for which turbulence is mainly resolved. However we do not know which part of the turbulence should be resolved and which part of it should be parameterized when a model runs at kilometric scales, the so-called “Terra Incognita“ from Wyngaard (2004). Thanks to increasing computational resources, in a near future, limited area NWP models will reach grid spacings on the order of 1 km or even 500 m. The aim of this study is to develop a parameterization which will provide adequate turbulence to these new-generation, high-resolution models. At first, this study describes a new diagnostic based on LES, which clarifies which part of turbulence should be parameterized at kilometric scales. This reference called “partial similarity function“ is a precious tool to quantify the error made by atmospheric models when running at kilometric scales. These errors are quantified for a state-of-the-art meso-scale model (Méso-NH) with several turbulence mixing options : different mixing lengths, different dimensionalities, a K-gradient scheme or an EDMF approach (K-gradient with a mass-flux scheme). K-gradient turbulence schemes are unable to reproduce the counter-gradient zone. In the grey-zone, this characteristic has a disastrous effect. As the instability is too large, the boundary layer is mixed by the dynamic of the model and the resolved mixing is too strong. The counter-gradient zone can be reproduced by adding a mass-flux scheme to the K-gradient turbulence scheme (Pergaud et al. (2009)). However the mass-flux scheme in its original form only produces wholly subgrid thermals at a grid size for which boundary-layer thermals should be partly resolved. In this case, the subgrid mixing is too strong. So the question arises as what is a subgrid thermal in the “grey zone“, when the mesh contains one thermal at the most and a part of the thermal has to be resolved by the advection scheme of the model. A conditional sampling is defined in order to detect the subgrid part of the thermals. It allows to determine the characteristics of the subgrid thermals in the “grey zone“ and to find out which assumptions of the mass-flux schemes are not verified. In the light of this study, the mass-flux scheme equations are established by taking the thermal fraction and the resolved vertical velocity into account. Finally, the system of equations is closed. The new parameterization is valid in the grey zone

The “Grey Zone” cold air outbreak global model intercomparison: A cross evaluation using large-eddy simulations

A stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition as observed in a cold air outbreak over the North Atlantic Ocean is compared in global climate and numerical weather prediction models and a large-eddy simulation model as part of the Working Group on Numerical Experimentation “Grey Zone” project. The focus of the project is to investigate to what degree current convection and boundary layer parameterizations behave in a scale-adaptive manner in situations where the model resolution approaches the scale of convection. Global model simulations were performed at a wide range of resolutions, with convective parameterizations turned on and off. The models successfully simulate the transition between the observed boundary layer structures, from a well-mixed stratocumulus to a deeper, partly decoupled cumulus boundary layer. There are indications that surface fluxes are generally underestimated. The amount of both cloud liquid water and cloud ice, and likely precipitation, are under-predicted, suggesting deficiencies in the strength of vertical mixing in shear-dominated boundary layers. But also regulation by precipitation and mixed-phase cloud microphysical processes play an important role in the case. With convection parameterizations switched on, the profiles of atmospheric liquid water and cloud ice are essentially resolution-insensitive. This, however, does not imply that convection parameterizations are scale-aware. Even at the highest resolutions considered here, simulations with convective parameterizations do not converge toward the results of convection-off experiments. Convection and boundary layer parameterizations strongly interact, suggesting the need for a unified treatment of convective and turbulent mixing when addressing scale-adaptivity

The atmospheric boundary layer and the "gray zone" of turbulence: a critical review

Recent increases in computing power mean that atmospheric models for numerical weather prediction are now able to operate at grid spacings of the order of a few hundred meters, comparable to the dominant turbulence length scales in the atmospheric boundary layer. As a result, models are starting to partially resolve the coherent overturning structures in the boundary layer. In this resolution regime, the so‐called boundary‐layer "gray zone", neither the techniques of high‐resolution atmospheric modeling (a few tens of meters resolution) nor those of traditional meteorological models (a few kilometers resolution) are appropriate because fundamental assumptions behind the parameterizations are violated. Nonetheless, model simulations in this regime may remain highly useful. In this paper, a newly‐formed gray‐zone boundary‐layer community lays the basis for parameterizing gray‐zone turbulence, identifies the challenges in high‐resolution atmospheric modeling and presents different gray‐zone boundary‐layer models. We discuss both the successful applications and the limitations of current parameterization approaches, and consider various issues in extending promising research approaches into use for numerical weather prediction. The ultimate goal of the research is the development of unified boundary‐layer parameterizations valid across all scales

Exploring the convective grey zone with regional simulations of a cold air outbreak

Cold air outbreaks can bring snow to populated areas and can affect aviation safety. Shortcomings in the representation of these phenomena in global and regional models are thought to be associated with large systematic cloud related radiative flux errors across many models. In this study, nine regional models have been used to simulate a cold air outbreak case at a range of grid spacings (1 km to 16 km) with convection represented explicitly or by a parametrization. Overall, there is more spread between model results for the simulations in which convection is parametrized when compared to simulations in which convection is represented explicitly. The quality of the simulations of both the stratocumulus and the convective regions of the domain are assessed with observational comparisons 24 hours into the simulation. The stratocumulus region is not well reproduced by the models, which tend to predict open cell convection with increasing resolution rather than stratocumulus. For the convective region the model spread reduces with increased resolution and there is some improvement in comparison to observations. Comparing models that have the same physical parametrizations or dynamical core suggest that both are important for accurately reproducing this case

Turbulent Transport in the Gray Zone: A Large Eddy Model Intercomparison Study of the CONSTRAIN Cold Air Outbreak Case

To quantify the turbulent transport at gray zone length scales between 1 and 10 km, the Lagrangian evolution of the CONSTRAIN cold air outbreak case was simulated with seven large eddy models. The case is characterized by rather large latent and sensible heat fluxes mention the meaning of SHF in the text below and remove from abstract and a rapid deepening rate of the boundary layer. In some models the entrainment velocity exceeds 4 cm/s. A significant fraction of this growth is attributed to a strong longwave radiative cooling of the inversion layer. The evolution and the timing of the breakup of the stratocumulus cloud deck differ significantly among the models. Sensitivity experiments demonstrate that a decrease in the prescribed cloud droplet number concentration and the inclusion of ice microphysics both act to speed up the thinning of the stratocumulus by enhancing the production of precipitation. In all models the formation of mesoscale fluctuations is clearly evident in the cloud fields and also in the horizontal wind velocity. Resolved vertical fluxes remain important for scales up to 10 km. The simulation results show that the resolved vertical velocity variance gradually diminishes with a coarsening of the horizontal mesh, but the total vertical fluxes of heat, moisture, and momentum are only weakly affected. This is a promising result as it demonstrates the potential use of a mesh size-dependent turbulent length scale for convective boundary layers at gray zone model resolutions

Which turbulence in the atmospheric models at the kilometric scale?

A Météo France, le modèle opérationnel AROME a une résolution horizontale de 2,5 km. L'augmentation des moyens de calcul permettra au prochain modèle opérationnel de tourner à des résolutions de l'ordre ou inférieures au kilomètre. Il entrera donc dans une gamme de résolution appelée zone grise de la turbulence. A ces échelles, les plus grandes structures turbulentes, qui étaient jusqu'alors entièrement sous-maille, devraient être en partie résolues. Cette thèse a permis de définir ce que les modèles devaient obtenir aux échelles kilométriques et sub-kilométriques, c'est-à-dire les parts sous-maille et résolue de référence de la turbulence dans la zone grise. Ces références ont été établies dans le cas de couches limites convectives en convection libre ou forcée, nuageuse ou non. Elles permettent de prouver qu'à hauteur de couche limite égale, les thermiques sont plus larges dans les couches surmontées de nuages. Elles indiquent surtout que, quelle que soit la configuration, les paramétrisations actuelles ne sont pas capables de reproduire la zone grise. Ces échelles demandent donc de développer une nouvelle paramétrisation de la turbulence. La représentation de la turbulence non locale est la part qu'il faut faire évoluer. Nous avons donc pris le parti de modifier le schéma de thermique en flux de masse. Pour étudier les structures cohérentes sous-maille de couche limite, nous avons créé une analyse conditionnelle permettant de circonscrire la part de thermique qui influence le schéma sous-maille en fonction de la résolution. Cet outil nous a permis de définir les caractéristiques des thermiques sous-maille dans la zone grise, mais également de vérifier à micro-échelle les hypothèses de méso-échelle des schémas en flux de masse. Nous avons démontré que toutes les hypothèses ne sont pas valables. Finalement nous avons établi le système d'équations d'un schéma en flux de masse qui fonctionne aux échelles kilométriques.The turbulence is well-represented on grid coarser than 2 km. Indeed, in meso-scale models, the turbulence is entirely sub-grid. The turbulence is also well-represented at very high resolution (10 to 100 m) by LES models for which turbulence is mainly resolved. However we do not know which part of the turbulence should be resolved and which part of it should be parameterized when a model runs at kilometric scales, the so-called “Terra Incognita“ from Wyngaard (2004). Thanks to increasing computational resources, in a near future, limited area NWP models will reach grid spacings on the order of 1 km or even 500 m. The aim of this study is to develop a parameterization which will provide adequate turbulence to these new-generation, high-resolution models. At first, this study describes a new diagnostic based on LES, which clarifies which part of turbulence should be parameterized at kilometric scales. This reference called “partial similarity function“ is a precious tool to quantify the error made by atmospheric models when running at kilometric scales. These errors are quantified for a state-of-the-art meso-scale model (Méso-NH) with several turbulence mixing options : different mixing lengths, different dimensionalities, a K-gradient scheme or an EDMF approach (K-gradient with a mass-flux scheme). K-gradient turbulence schemes are unable to reproduce the counter-gradient zone. In the grey-zone, this characteristic has a disastrous effect. As the instability is too large, the boundary layer is mixed by the dynamic of the model and the resolved mixing is too strong. The counter-gradient zone can be reproduced by adding a mass-flux scheme to the K-gradient turbulence scheme (Pergaud et al. (2009)). However the mass-flux scheme in its original form only produces wholly subgrid thermals at a grid size for which boundary-layer thermals should be partly resolved. In this case, the subgrid mixing is too strong. So the question arises as what is a subgrid thermal in the “grey zone“, when the mesh contains one thermal at the most and a part of the thermal has to be resolved by the advection scheme of the model. A conditional sampling is defined in order to detect the subgrid part of the thermals. It allows to determine the characteristics of the subgrid thermals in the “grey zone“ and to find out which assumptions of the mass-flux schemes are not verified. In the light of this study, the mass-flux scheme equations are established by taking the thermal fraction and the resolved vertical velocity into account. Finally, the system of equations is closed. The new parameterization is valid in the grey zone

Grey-Zone Turbulence in the Neutral Atmospheric Boundary Layer

International audienceThe turbulence generated by wind shear is described at grey-zone resolutions using a theoretical neutral boundary layer based on atmospheric conditions constructed from measurements from the CASES-99 field campaign. Six-metre-resolution large-eddy simulations (LES) are performed to access the "true" resolved turbulence for two cases, corresponding to a forcing of the boundary layer by zonal geostrophic wind speeds of 10 m s −1 and 20 m s −1. The LES fields are subject to a coarse-graining procedure in order to compute turbulence diagnostics in the grey zone, with the robustness and weakness of various averaging procedures tested, for which simple top-hat averaging is found to be both suitable and accurate. In addition, the "true" resolved and subgrid-scale fluxes, variances, turbulent kinetic energy and production terms are quantified on various scales. The grey zone of turbulence is defined as the range of scales where 10-90% of turbulence is resolved, which here ranges from resolutions of 25-800 m (0.03 1). The turbulence parametrizations, which are tested in the Méso-NH model by running simulations at resolutions from the LES scale to the mesoscale, fail to produce the correct turbulence regardless of resolution

Representation of the grey zone of turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer

Numerical weather prediction model forecasts at horizontal grid lengths in the range of 100 to 1 km are now possible. This range of scales is the "grey zone of turbulence". Previous studies, based on large-eddy simulation (LES) analysis from the MésoNH model, showed that some assumptions of some turbulence schemes on boundary-layer structures are not valid. Indeed, boundary-layer thermals are now partly resolved, and the subgrid remaining part of the thermals is possibly largely or completely absent from the model columns. First, some modifications of the equations of the shallow convection scheme have been tested in the MésoNH model and in an idealized version of the operational AROME model at resolutions coarser than 500 m. Secondly, although the turbulence is mainly vertical at mesoscale (>  2 km resolution), it is isotropic in LES (<  100 m resolution). It has been proved by LES analysis that, in convective boundary layers, the horizontal production of turbulence cannot be neglected at resolutions finer than half of the boundary-layer height. Thus, in the grey zone, fully unidirectional turbulence scheme should become tridirectional around 500 m resolution. At Météo-France, the dynamical turbulence is modelled by a K-gradient in LES as well as at mesoscale in both MésoNH and AROME, which needs mixing lengths in the formulation. Vertical and horizontal mixing lengths have been calculated from LES of neutral and convective cases at resolutions in the grey zone