Non-equilibrium model of spray-stratified atmospheric boundary layer under high wind conditions

Magnetite-based ferrofluids are manufactured magneto-polarisable nanofluids that magnetize in an external magnetic field in a similar way to natural paramagnetic fluids(e.g. oxygen), however to a much higher degree. Paramagnetic and ferrofluid flows are described by similar equations and it is expected that they would exhibit a similar behaviour. Indeed we show that in both type of fluids the most prominent instability structures align with the in-layer field component and the onset of magnetoconvection is delayed by the field inclination. However we find that in contrast to paramagnetic fluids the instabilities arising in differentially heated ferrofluids placed in a uniform external oblique magnetic field are oscillatory. This is traced back to the nonlinearity of the magnetic field distribution induced inside the ferrofluid layer that arises whenever the direction of the applied magnetic field is not normal. Given that the magnetic field inclination with respect to the plane of the layer is inevitable near its edges the obtained stability results shed light on the possible reasons for the existnce of unsteady patterns that have been detected in the normal field experiments we reported previously

Effect of ocean spray on vertical momentum transport under high-wind conditions

Two mathematical models are proposed detailing the influence of ocean spray on vertical momentum transport under high-wind conditions associated with a hurricane or severe storm. The first model is based on a turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) equation and accounts for the so-called lubrication effect due to the reduction of turbulence intensity. The second model is based on Monin–Obukhov similarity (MOS) and uses available experimental data. It is demonstrated that the flow acceleration is negligible for wind speeds below a certain critical value due to the fact that the spray volume concentration is low for such speeds. For wind speeds higher than the critical value, the spray concentration rapidly increases, which results in significant flow acceleration. Both models produce qualitatively similar results for all turbulent flow parameters considered. It was found that the MOS-based model tends to predict a noticeably stronger lubrication effect than the TKE-based model, especially for lower wind speeds. The results of model calculations are in very good agreement with available experimental data for the spray production values near the upper bound. It is also shown that neither the value of the turbulent Schmidt number in the TKE-based model nor the choice of a stability profile function affects the spray-laden flow dynamics significantly

Resolving intercontinental pollution plumes in global models of atmospheric transport

Synoptic-scale pollution plumes in the free troposphere can preserve their identity as well-defined structures for a week or more while traveling around the globe. Eulerian chemical transport models (CTMs) have difficulty reproducing these layered structures due to numerical plume dissipation. We show that this dissipation is much faster than would be expected from the order of the advection scheme because of interaction between numerical diffusion and the nonuniformity of the atmospheric flow. The nonuniform flow stretches out the plume, enhancing the effect of numerical diffusion. For sufficiently strong stretching, the numerical decay of the plume is independent of the model grid resolution and is set instead by the flow Lyapunov exponent l. In this regime, conventional numerical methods are not convergent: upon increasing grid resolution, the plume still decays with the same decay rate. The critical plume size below which the numerical scheme does not converge is set by the geometric mean of the grid spacing and the characteristic length scale l = v/l over which the flow varies, where v is the wind speed. Above this critical plume size the numerically induced decay rate of the plume scales like the square root of the grid spacing. Application to an intercontinental pollution plume in a global CTM with realistic atmospheric flow shows that proper simulation of such a plume would require an impractical increase in grid resolution. Novel methods such as adaptive grids or embedded Lagrangian plumes are needed.Engineering and Applied Science