Large-eddy simulations of geophysical turbulent flows with applications to planetary boundary layer research
Igor Esau
发表信息：
Esau, I. (2009), Proceedings of 5th Norwegian conference "MekIT'09", Trondheim, 26-27 May, Eds. B. Skallerud and H.I. Andersson, Tapir Academic Press, pp. 7-37
The present study gives an overview and emphasizes principal moments of the applications of the turbulence-resolving modeling with large-eddy simulation (LES) numerical technique to planetary boundary layer (PBL) research and climate studies. LES proved to be very useful in understanding of the atmospheric and ocean turbulent exchange and ultimately in parameterization improvement in traditional meteorological models. LES have played a key role in recognizing the importance of previously ignored self-organized structures in the geophysical turbulence. LES assisted theoreticians and weather/climate modelers with reliable information about the averaged vertical structure of the PBL in convection and shear regimes as well as with better estimations of key PBL parameters, e.g. an entrainment rate, for model calibrations. At present, LES are an essential, indispensible part of geosciences, while the mainstream of the LES research still deals with idealized case studies with rather simple micro-physics.
This paper puts forth a new large eddy simulation closure modeling strategy for two-dimensional turbulent geophysical flows. This closure modeling approach utilizes approximate deconvolution, which is based solely on mathematical approximations and does not employ additional phenomenological arguments to the model. The new approximate deconvolution model is tested in the numerical simulation of the wind-driven circulation in a shallow ocean basin, a standard prototype of more realistic ocean dynamics. The model employs the barotropic vorticity equation driven by a symmetric double-gyre wind fo…
Observational studies of a planetary boundary layer (PBL) are difficult. Ground-born measurements usually characterize only a small portion of the PBL immediately above the surface. Air-born measurements cannot be obtained close to the surface and therefore cannot capture any significant portion of the PBL interior. Moreover, observations are limited in choice of instrumentation, time, duration, location of measurements and occasional weather conditions. Although turbulence-resolving simulations with a large-eddy simulation (LES) code do not supplant observational studies, they provide valuabl…
Eddy saturation describes the nonlinear mechanism in geophysical flows whereby, when average conditions are considered, direct forcing of the zonal flow increases the eddy kinetic energy, while the energy associated with the zonal flow does not increase. Here we present a minimal baroclinic model that exhibits complete eddy saturation. Starting from Phillips' classical quasi-geostrophic two-level model on the beta channel of the mid-latitudes, we derive a reduced order model comprising of six ordinary differential equations including parameterised eddies. This model features two physically rea…
In this paper, a dynamic closure modeling approach has been derived to stabilize the projection-based reduced order models in the long-term evolution of forced-dissipative dynamical systems. To simplify our derivation without losing generalizability, the proposed reduced order modeling (ROM) framework is first constructed by Galerkin projection of the single-layer quasi-geostrophic equation, a standard prototype of large-scale general circulation models, onto a set of dominant proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) modes. We then propose an eddy viscosity closure approach to stabilize the resul…
In this paper we advance physical background of the energy- and flux-budget turbulence closure based on the budget equations for the turbulent kinetic and potential energies and turbulent fluxes of momentum and buoyancy, and a new relaxation equation for the turbulent dissipation time-scale. The closure is designed for stratified geophysical flows from neutral to very stable and accounts for the Earth rotation. In accordance to modern experimental evidence, the closure implies maintaining of turbulence by the velocity shear at any gradient Richardson number Ri, and distinguishes between the tw…
In this paper we study the motion of a fluid with several dispersed particles whose concentration is very small (smaller than $10^{-3}$), with possible applications to problems coming from geophysics, meteorology, and oceanography. We consider a very dilute suspension of heavy particles in a quasi-incompressible fluid (low Mach number). In our case the Stokes number is small and --as pointed out in the theory of multiphase turbulence-- we can use an Eulerian model instead of a Lagrangian one. The assumption of low concentration allows us to disregard particle--particle interactions, but we tak…
In large-eddy simulations, subgrid-scale (SGS) processes are parameterized as a function of filtered grid-scale variables. First-order, algebraic SGS models are based on the eddy-viscosity assumption, which does not always hold for turbulence. Here we apply supervised deep neural networks (DNNs) to learn SGS stresses from a set of neighboring coarse-grained velocity from direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of the atmospheric boundary layer at friction Reynolds numbers Re_τ up to 1243 without invoking the eddy-viscosity assumption. The DNN model was found to produce higher correlation of SGS st…
The ocean and the atmosphere, and hence the climate, are governed at large scale by interactions between pressure gradient, Coriolis and buoyancy forces. This leads to a quasi-geostrophic balance in which, in a two-dimensional-like fashion, the energy injected by solar radiation, winds or tides goes to large scales in what is known as an inverse cascade. Yet, except for Ekman friction, energy dissipation and turbulent mixing occur at small scale implying the formation of such scales associated with breaking of geostrophic dynamics through wave-eddy interactions \cite{ledwell_00, vanneste_13} o…
We investigate the application of artificial neural networks to stabilize proper orthogonal decomposition based reduced order models for quasi-stationary geophysical turbulent flows. An extreme learning machine concept is introduced for computing an eddy-viscosity closure dynamically to incorporate the effects of the truncated modes. We consider a four-gyre wind-driven ocean circulation problem as our prototype setting to assess the performance of the proposed data-driven approach. Our framework provides a significant reduction in computational time and effectively retains the dynamics of the …
Understanding the statistics of ocean geostrophic turbulence is of utmost importance in understanding its interactions with the global ocean circulation and the climate system as a whole. Here, a study of eddy-mixing entropy in a forced-dissipative barotropic ocean model is presented. Entropy is a concept of fundamental importance in statistical physics and information theory; motivated by equilibrium statistical mechanics theories of ideal geophysical fluids, we consider the effect of forcing and dissipation on eddy-mixing entropy, both analytically and numerically. By diagnosing the time evo…
Studying the atmospheric Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) is crucial to understand the climate of a planet. The meteorological measurements by the instruments onboard InSight at a latitude of 4.5$^{\circ}$N make a uniquely rich dataset to study the active turbulent dynamics of the daytime PBL on Mars. Here we use the high-sensitivity continuous pressure, wind, temperature measurements in the first 400 sols of InSight operations (from northern late winter to midsummer) to analyze wind gusts, convective cells and vortices in Mars' daytime PBL. We compare InSight measurements to turbulence-resolvin…
In the present work, we propose a new parameterization for the concentration flux using fractional derivatives. The fractional order differential equation in the longitudinal and vertical directions is used to obtain the concentration distribution of contaminants in the Planetary Boundary Layer. We solve this model and we compare the solution against both real experiments and traditional integer order derivative models. We show that our fractional model gives very good results in fitting the experimental data, and perform far better than the traditional Gaussian model. In fact, the fractional …
Relative dispersion in a neutrally stratified planetary boundary layer (PBL) is investigated by means of Large-Eddy Simulations (LES). Despite the small extension of the inertial range of scales in the simulated PBL, our Lagrangian statistics turns out to be compatible with the Richardson $t^3$ law for the average of square particle separation. This emerges from the application of nonstandard methods of analysis through which a precise measure of the Richardson constant was also possible. Its values is estimated as $C_2\sim 0.5$ in close agreement with recent experiments and three-dimensional …
Large Eddy Simulations of turbulent flows are powerful tools used in many engineering and geophysical settings. Choosing the right value of the free parameters for their subgrid scale models is a crucial task for which the current methods present several shortcomings. Using a technique called nudging we show that Large Eddy Simulations can synchronize to data coming from a high-resolution direct numerical simulation of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence. Furthermore, we found that the degree of synchronization is dependent on the value of the parameters of the subgrid scale models utilized, …
We present a spatio-temporal analysis of a statistically stationary rotating turbulence experiment, aiming to extract a signature of inertial waves, and to determine the scales and frequencies at which they can be detected. The analysis uses two-point spatial correlations of the temporal Fourier transform of velocity fields obtained from time-resolved stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurements in the rotating frame. We quantify the degree of anisotropy of turbulence as a function of frequency and spatial scale. We show that this space-time-dependent anisotropy is well described by th…
We review progress that has been made in utilizing one form of Direct Statistical Simulation (DSS) to describe geophysical and astrophysical flows that are anisotropic and inhomogeneous. We first explain the approach, which is based upon a systematic and conservative expansion of the equations of motion for low-order equal-time cumulants. We place the method into context with other statistical procedures. Truncation at second order in the hierarchy of cumulants is equivalent to retaining the interaction between zonal mean flows and eddies. Eddy-eddy interactions appear at higher orders, but ca…
An overview is presented of several diverse branches of work in the area of effectively 2D fluid equilibria which have in common that they are constrained by an infinite number of conservation laws. Broad concepts, and the enormous variety of physical phenomena that can be explored, are highlighted. These span, roughly in order of increasing complexity, Euler flow, nonlinear Rossby waves, 3D axisymmetric flow, shallow water dynamics, and 2D magnetohydrodynamics. The classical field theories describing these systems bear some resemblance to perhaps more familiar fluctuating membrane and continu…
Planetary rotation organizes fluid motions into coherent, long-lived swirls, known as large-scale vortices (LSVs), which play an important role in the dynamics and long-term evolution of geophysical and astrophysical fluids. Here, using direct numerical simulations, we show that LSVs in rapidly rotating mixed convective and stably stratified fluids, which approximates the two-layer, turbulent-stratified dynamics of many geophysical and astrophysical fluids, have a generic shape and that their size can be predicted. We show that LSVs emerge in the convection zone from upscale energy transfers a…
The mean state of the atmosphere and ocean is set through a balance between external forcing (winds, radiation, heat and freshwater fluxes) and the emergent turbulence, which transfers energy to dissipative structures. The forcing gives rise to jets in the atmosphere and currents in the ocean, which spontaneously develop turbulent eddies through the baroclinic instability. A critical step in the development of a theory of climate is to properly include the resulting eddy-induced turbulent transport of properties like heat, moisture, and carbon. The baroclinic instability generates flow structu…
Buoyancy effects in unstably stratified mixing layers express themselves through gravity currents of heavy fluid which propagate in an ambient lighter fluid. These currents are encountered in numerous geophysical flows, industrial safety and environmental protection issues. During transition to turbulence a strong distortion of the separating interface between regions containing `heavy' or `light' fluid arises. The complexity of this interface will be used to monitor the progress of the mixing. We concentrate on the enhancement of surface-area and `surface-wrinkling' of the separating interfac…
Many geophysical and astrophysical phenomena are driven by turbulent fluid dynamics, containing behaviors separated by tens of orders of magnitude in scale. While direct simulations have made large strides toward understanding geophysical systems, such models still inhabit modest ranges of the governing parameters that are difficult to extrapolate to planetary settings. The canonical problem of rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection provides an alternate approach - isolating the fundamental physics in a reduced setting. Theoretical studies and asymptotically-reduced simulations in rotating convec…
Convection is a fundamental physical process in the fluid cores of planets because it is the primary transport mechanism for heat and chemical species and the primary energy source for planetary magnetic fields. Key properties of convection, such as the characteristic flow velocity and lengthscale, are poorly quantified in planetary cores due to their strong dependence on planetary rotation, buoyancy driving and magnetic fields, which are all difficult to model under realistic conditions. In the absence of strong magnetic fields, the core convective flows are expected to be in a regime of rapi…
Stochastic Structural Stability Theory (S3T) provides analytical methods for understanding the emergence and equilibration of jets from the turbulence in planetary atmospheres based on the dynamics of the statistical mean state of the turbulence closed at second order. Predictions for formation and equilibration of turbulent jets made using S3T are critically compared with results of simulations made using the associated quasi-linear and nonlinear models. S3T predicts the observed bifurcation behavior associated with the emergence of jets, their equilibration and their breakdown as a function …
Jets coexist with planetary scale waves in the turbulence of planetary atmospheres. The coherent component of these structures arises from cooperative interaction between the coherent structures and the incoherent small-scale turbulence in which they are embedded. It follows that theoretical understanding of the dynamics of jets and planetary scale waves requires adopting the perspective of statistical state dynamics (SSD) which comprises the dynamics of the interaction between coherent and incoherent components in the turbulent state. In this work the S3T implementation of SSD for barotropic …
Results from the laboratory experiments on the evolution of baroclinically unstable flows generated in a rotating tank with topographic beta-effect are presented. We study zonal jets of alternating direction which occur in these flows. The primary system we model includes lighter fluid in the South and heavier fluid in the North with resulting slow meridional circulation and fast mean zonal motion. In a two-layer system the velocity shear between the layers results in baroclinic instability which equilibrates with time and, due to interaction with beta-effect generates zonal jets. This system …
Most of the turbulent flows appearing in nature (e.g. geophysical and astrophysical flows) are subjected to strong rotation and stratification. These effects break the symmetries of classical, homogenous isotropic turbulence. In doing so, they introduce a natural decomposition of phase space in terms of wave modes and potential vorticity modes. The appearance of a new time scale associated to the propagation of waves, in addition to the eddy turnover time, increases the complexity of the energy transfers between the various scales; nonlinearly interacting waves may dominate at some scales whil…
Turbulent flows in the presence of walls may be apprehended as a collection of momentum- and energy-containing eddies (energy-eddies), whose sizes differ by many orders of magnitude. These eddies follow a self-sustaining cycle, i.e., existing eddies are seeds for the inception of new ones, and so forth. Understanding this process is critical for the modelling and control of geophysical and industrial flows, in which a non-negligible fraction of the energy is dissipated by turbulence in the immediate vicinity of walls. In this study, we examine the causal interactions of energy-eddies in wall-b…
Machine learning methods have been extensively used to study the dynamics of complex fluid flows. One such algorithm, known as adaptive neural fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), can generate data-driven predictions for flow fields but has not been applied to natural geophysical flows in large-scale rivers. Herein, we demonstrate the potential of ANFIS to produce three-dimensional (3D) realizations of the instantaneous flood flow field in several large-scale, virtual meandering rivers. The 3D dynamics of flood flow in large-scale rivers were obtained using large-eddy simulation (LES). The LES resu…
Non-equilibrium wall turbulence with mean-flow three-dimensionality is ubiquitous in geophysical and engineering flows. Under these conditions, turbulence may experience a counter-intuitive depletion of the turbulent stresses, which has important implications for modelling and control. Yet, current turbulence theories have been established mainly for statistically two-dimensional equilibrium flows and are unable to predict the reduction in the Reynolds stress magnitude. In the present work, we propose a multiscale model which explains the response of non-equilibrium wall-bounded turbulence und…
The stochastic variational approach for geophysical fluid dynamics was introduced by Holm (Proc Roy Soc A, 2015) as a framework for deriving stochastic parameterisations for unresolved scales. This paper applies the variational stochastic parameterisation in a two-layer quasi-geostrophic model for a beta-plane channel flow configuration. We present a new method for estimating the stochastic forcing (used in the parameterisation) to approximate unresolved components using data from the high resolution deterministic simulation, and describe a procedure for computing physically-consistent initial…
The equations governing atmospheric flows are nonlinear. Consequently, the hierarchy of cumulant equations is not closed. But because atmospheric flows are inhomogeneous and anisotropic, the nonlinearity may manifest itself only weakly through interactions of mean fields with disturbances such as thermals or eddies. In such situations, truncations of the hierarchy of cumulant equations hold promise as a closure strategy. We review how truncations at second order can be used to model and elucidate the dynamics of atmospheric flows. Two examples are considered. First, we study the growth of a dr…
