No Arabic abstract
The group focused on a model problem of idealised moist air convection in a single column of atmosphere. Height, temperature and moisture variables were chosen to simplify the mathematical representation (along the lines of the Boussinesq approximation in a height variable defined in terms of pressure). This allowed exact simple solutions of the numerical and partial differential equation problems to be found. By examining these, we identify column behaviour, stability issues and explore the feasibility of a more general solution process.
Multi-fluid models have recently been proposed as an approach to improving the representation of convection in weather and climate models. This is an attractive framework as it is fundamentally dynamical, removing some of the assumptions of mass-flux convection schemes which are invalid at current model resolutions. However, it is still not understood how best to close the multi-fluid equations for atmospheric convection. In this paper we develop a simple two-fluid, single-column model with one rising and one falling fluid. No further modelling of sub-filter variability is included. We then apply this model to Rayleigh-B{e}nard convection, showing that, with minimal closures, the correct scaling of the heat flux (Nu) is predicted over six orders of magnitude of buoyancy forcing (Ra). This suggests that even a very simple two-fluid model can accurately capture the dominant coherent overturning structures of convection.
A single-column model (SCM) is constructed in the regional climate model RegCM4. The evolution of a dry convection boundary layer (DCBL) is used to evaluate this SCM and compare four planetary boundary layer (PBL) schemes, the Holtslag-Boville scheme (HB), Yonsei University scheme (YSU), and two University of Washington schemes (UW01, Grenier-Bretherton-McCaa scheme and UW09, Bretherton-Park scheme), using the SCM approach. A large-eddy simulation (LES) of the DCBL is performed as a benchmark to examine how well a PBL parameterization scheme reproduces the LES results, and several diagnostic outputs are compared to evaluate the schemes. In general, with the DCBL case, the YSU scheme performs best for reproducing the LES results, which include well-mixed features and vertical sensible heat fluxes; UW09 has the second best performance, UW01 has the third best performance, and the HB scheme has the worst performance. The results show that the SCM is proper constructed. Although more cases and further testing are required, these simulations show encouraging results towards the use of this SCM framework for studying the physical processes in RegCM4.
Tipping elements in the climate system are large-scale subregions of the Earth that might possess threshold behavior under global warming with large potential impacts on human societies. Here, we study a subset of five tipping elements and their interactions in a conceptual and easily extendable framework: the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Amazon rainforest. In this nonlinear and multistable system, we perform a basin stability analysis to detect its stable states and their associated Earth system resilience. Using this approach, we perform a system-wide and comprehensive robustness analysis with more than 3.5 billion ensemble members. Further, we investigate dynamic regimes where some of the states lose stability and oscillations appear using a newly developed basin bifurcation analysis methodology. Our results reveal that the state of four or five tipped elements has the largest basin volume for large levels of global warming beyond 4 {deg}C above pre-industrial climate conditions. For lower levels of warming, states including disintegrated ice sheets on West Antarctica and Greenland have higher basin volume than other state configurations. Therefore in our model, we find that the large ice sheets are of particular importance for Earth system resilience. We also detect the emergence of limit cycles for 0.6% of all ensemble members at rare parameter combinations. Such limit cycle oscillations mainly occur between the Greenland Ice Sheet and AMOC (86%), due to their negative feedback coupling. These limit cycles point to possibly dangerous internal modes of variability in the climate system that could have played a role in paleoclimatic dynamics such as those unfolding during the Pleistocene ice age cycles.
Turbulent mixing processes in deep alpine Lake Garda (I) have not extensively been observed. Knowledge about drivers of turbulent fluxes are important for insights in the transport of matter, nutrients and pollutants, in the lake and in natural water bodies in general. In this paper, the occurrence of internal wave induced turbulent convection is addressed as opposed to the more common shear-induced turbulence in a density stratified environment. Observations are analyzed from a dedicated yearlong mooring holding 100 high-resolution temperature sensors at 1.5 m intervals under a single current meter in the deeper half of the 344 m deep lake-center. Episodically, the weakly density stratified waters in the lower 50 m above the lake floor show spectral slope and coherence evidence of short-term (15 to 30 minutes) convective motions under internal waves that are supported by the stronger stratified waters above. The near-homogeneous conditions are not attributable to frictional Ekman dynamics, but to large-scale internal wave crests.
The exergy of the dry atmosphere can be considered as another aspect of the meteorological theories of available energies. The local and global properties of the dry available enthalpy function, also called flow exergy, were investigated in a previous paper (Marquet, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., Vol 117, p.449-475, 1991). The concept of exergy is well defined in thermodynamics, and several generalizations to chemically reacting systems have already been made. Similarly, the concept of moist available enthalpy is presented in this paper in order to generalize the dry available enthalpy to the case of a moist atmosphere. It is a local exergy-like function which possesses a simple analytical expression where only two unknown constants are to be determined, a reference temperature and a reference pressure. The moist available enthalpy, $a_m$, is defined in terms of a moist potential change in total entropy. The local function $a_m$ can be separated into temperature, pressure and latent components. The latent component is a new component that is not present in the dry case. The moist terms have been estimated using a representative cumulus vertical profile. It appears that the modifications brought by the moist formulation are important in comparison with the dry case. Other local and global properties are also investigated and comparisons are made with some other available energy functions used in thermodynamics and meteorology.