Extremes, intermittency, and time directionality of atmospheric turbulence at the crossover from production to inertial scales

Abstract

The effects of mechanical generation of turbulent kinetic energy and buoyancy forces on the statistics of air temperature and velocity increments are experimentally investigated at the cross over from production to inertial range scales. The ratio of an approximated mechanical to buoyant production (or destruction) of turbulent kinetic energy can be used to form a dimensionless stability parameter $\zeta$ that classifies the state of the atmosphere as common in many atmospheric surface layer studies. Here, we assess how $\zeta$ affects the scale-wise evolution of the probability of extreme air temperature excursions, their asymmetry and time reversibility. The analysis makes use of high frequency velocity and air temperature time series measurements collected at $z$=5 m above a grass surface at very large Reynolds numbers $Re=u_* z/\nu > 1\times 10^5$ ($u_*$ is the friction velocity and $\nu$ is the kinematic viscosity of air). Using conventional higher-order structure functions, temperature exhibits larger intermittency and wider multifractality when compared to the longitudinal velocity component, consistent with laboratory studies and simulations conducted at lower $Re$. Moreover, deviations from the classical Kolmogorov scaling for the longitudinal velocity are shown to be reasonably described by the She-Leveque vortex filament model that has no 'tunable' parameters and is independent of $\zeta$. The work demonstrates that external boundary conditions, and in particular the magnitude and sign of the sensible heat flux, have a significant impact on temperature advection-diffusion dynamics within the inertial range. In particular, atmospheric stability affects both the buildup of intermittency and the persistent asymmetry and time irreversibility observed in the first two decades of inertial sub-range scales.