Review of Wave-Turbulence Interactions in the Stable Atmospheric Boundary Layer

SUN,J. C. J. NAPPO, L. MAHRT, D. BELUSIC, B. GRISOGONO, D. R. STAUFER, M. PULIDO, C. STAQUET, Q. JIANG, A. POUQUET, C. YAGUE, B. GALPERIN, R. B. SMITH, J. J. FINNIGAN, S. D. MAYOR, G. SVENSSON, A. A. GRACHEV, AND W. D. NEFF

REVIEWS OF GEOPHYSICS

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION

Lugar: Washington DC. Impact Factor 2014: 14.8; Año: 2015

8755-1209

Flow in a stably-stratified environment is charac-terized by anisotropic and intermittent turbulence,and wavelike motions of varying amplitudes and pe-riods. Understanding turbulence intermittency andwave-turbulence interactions in a stably-stratifiedflow remains a challenging issue in geosciences in-cluding planetary atmospheres and oceans. The sta-ble atmospheric boundary layer (SABL) commonlyoccurs when the ground surface is cooled by long-wave radiation emission such as at night over landsurfaces, or even daytime over snow and ice surfaces,and when warm air is advected over cold surfaces.Intermittent turbulence intensification in the SABLimpacts human activities and weather variability, yetit cannot be generated in state-of-the-art numeri-cal forecast models. This failure is mainly due to alack of understanding of the physical mechanisms forseemingly random turbulence generation in a stably-stratified flow, in which wave-turbulence interactionis a potential mechanism for turbulence intermit-tency. A workshop on wave-turbulence interactionsin the SABL (WINABL) addressed the current un-derstanding and challenges of wave-turbulence inter-actions, and the role of wavelike motions in contribut-ing to anisotropic and intermittent turbulence fromthe perspectives of theory, observations, and numer-ical parameterization. There have been a number ofreviews on waves, and a few on turbulence in stably-stratified flows, but not much on wave-turbulenceinteractions. This review focuses on the nocturnalSABL, however, the discussions here on intermit-tent turbulence and wave-turbulence interactions instably-stratified flows underscore important issues instably-stratified geophysical dynamics in general.