Planetary Boundary Layer Transport Research Articles

This paper investigates the characteristics of turbulence schemes. Turbulence closures are fundamental for modeling the atmospheric diffusion, transport and dispersion in the boundary layer. In particular, in non-homogeneous conditions, a proper description of turbulent transport in planetary boundary layer is fundamental aspect. This study is based on the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) and combines four different turbulence schemes to assess if the different schemes have a impact on simulation results of vertical profiles. Two of these schemes are Isotropc Deformation scheme (I.Def) and Anisotropic deformation scheme (A.Def) that are simple local scheme based on Smagorinsky scheme. The other two are Mellor-Yamada scheme (MY2.5) and Deardorff TKE scheme (D.TKE) that are more complex non-local schemes that include a prognostic equation for turbulence kinetic energy. The simulated potential temperature, wind speed and mixing ratio are compared against radiosonde observations from the study region. MY2.5 shows consistently reasonable vertical profile and closet to observation. D.TKE shows good results under relatively strong synoptic condition especially, mixing ratio simulation. Validation results show that all schemes consistently underestimated wind speed and mixing ratio but, potential temperature was somewhat overestimated.