An official website of the United States government
High-speed, spatially-evolving turbulent boundary layers are of great importance across civilian and military applications. Furthermore, compressible boundary layers present additional challenges for energy and active scalar transport. Understanding transport phenomena is critical to efficient high-speed vehicle designs. Although at any instantaneous point in time a flow field may seem random, regions within the flow can exhibit coherency across space and time. These coherent structures play a key role in momentum and energy transport within the boundary layer. The two main categories for coherent structure identification are Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches. In this video, we focus on 4D (3D+Time) Lagrangian Coherent Structure (LCS), and the effect of wall curvature/temperature on these structures. We present the finite-time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE) for three wall thermal conditions (cooling, quasi-adiabatic and heating) for a concave wall curvature that builds on the experimental study by Donovan et al. (J. Fluid Mech., 259, 1-24, 1994). The flow is subject to a strong concave curvature (δ/R ~ -0.083, R is the curvature radius) followed by a very strong convex curvature (δ/R = 0.17). A GPU-accelerated particle simulation forms the basis for the 3-D FTLE where particles are advected over flow fields obtained via Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) with high spatial/temporal resolution. We also show the cross-correlation between Q2 events (ejections) and the FTLE. The video is available at: https://gfm.aps.org/meetings/dfd-2022/63122e0e199e4c2da9a946a0
more »
« less
A Three Dimensional Lagrangian Analysis of the Smoke Plume From the 2019/2020 Australian Wildfire Event
Abstract During the 2019/2020 Australian bushfire season, intense wildfires generated a rising plume with a record concentration of smoke in the lower stratosphere. Motivated by this event, we use the atmospheric wind reanalysis model ERA5 to characterize the three dimensional atmospheric transport in the general region of the plume following a dynamical system approach in the Lagrangian framework. Aided by the Finite Time Lyapunov Exponent tool (FTLE), we identify Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) which simplify the three‐dimensional transport description. Different reduced FTLE formulations are compared to study the impact of the vertical velocity and the vertical shear on the movement of the plume. We then consider in detail some of the uncovered LCS that are directly relevant for the evolution of the plume, as well as other LCS that are less relevant for the plume but have interesting geometries, and we show the presence of 3D lobe dynamics at play. Also, we unveil the qualitatively different dynamical fates of the smoke parcels trajectories depending on the region in which they originated. One feature that had a pronounced influence on the evolution of the smoke plume is a synoptic‐scale anticyclone that was formed near the same time as, and close to the region of, intense wildfires. We analyze this anticyclone in detail, including its formation, the entrainment of the smoke plume, and how it maintained coherence for a long time. Transport paths obtained with the inclusion of the buoyancy effects are compared with those obtained considering only the reanalysis velocity.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2124210
- PAR ID:
- 10481441
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Volume:
- 128
- Issue:
- 21
- ISSN:
- 2169-897X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Injections of wildfire smoke plumes into the free troposphere impact air quality, yet model forecasts of injections are poor. Here, we use aircraft observations obtained during the 2019 western US wildfires (FIREX-AQ) to evaluate a commonly used smoke plume rise parameterization in two atmospheric chemistry-transport models (WRF-Chem and HRRR-Smoke). Observations show that smoke injections into the free troposphere occur in 35% of plumes, whereas the models forecast 59–95% indicating false injections in the simulations. False injections were associated with both models overestimating fire heat flux and terrain height, and with WRF-Chem underestimating planetary boundary layer height. We estimate that the radiant fraction of heat flux is 0.5 to 25 times larger in models than in observations, depending on fuel type. Model performance was substantially improved by using observed heat flux and boundary layer heights, confirming that models need accurate heat fluxes and boundary layer heights to correctly forecast plume injections.more » « less
-
In this study, we delve into the intricate relation between Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS), primarily represented by the finite-time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE), and instantaneous temperature in turbulent wall-bounded flow scenarios. Turbulence, despite its chaotic facade, houses coherent structures vital to understanding the dynamical behavior of fluid flows. Recognizing this, we leverage high-fidelity Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) to investigate compressible flows, focusing on the attracting manifolds in FTLE and their correlation with instantaneous temperature. The consequent insights into the coupling between fluid dynamics and thermodynamics reveal the profound influence of vortex stretching, shearing, and compression on local thermodynamic characteristics. Notably, the interplay of instantaneous static temperature and fluid properties, along with the cascading nature of energy in turbulent flows, underpins the observed correlation. Furthermore, we leveraged a high-performance, scalable volumetric particle advection scheme for LCS determination in subsonic (M∞ = 0.8) and supersonic (M∞ = 1.6) turbulent boundary layers over adiabatic flat plates.more » « less
-
Abstract. As wildfires intensify and fire seasons lengthen across the western US, the development of models that can predict smoke plume concentrations and track wildfire-induced air pollution exposures has become critical. Wildfire smoke plume height is a key indicator of the vertical placement of plume mass emitted from wildfire-related aerosol sources in climate and air quality models. With advancements in Earth observation (EO) satellites, spaceborne products for aerosol layer height or plume injection height have recently emerged with increased global-scale spatiotemporal resolution. However, to evaluate column radiative effects and refine satellite algorithms, vertical profiles of regionally representative aerosol properties from wildfires need to be measured directly. In this study, we conducted the first comprehensive evaluation of four passive satellite remote-sensing techniques specifically designed for retrieving plume height. We compared these satellite products with the airborne Wyoming Cloud Lidar (WCL) measurements during the 2018 Biomass Burning Flux Measurements of Trace Gases and Aerosols (BB-FLUX) field campaign in the western US. Two definitions, namely, “plume top” and “extinction-weighted mean plume height”, were used to derive the representative heights of wildfire smoke plumes, based on the WCL-derived vertical aerosol extinction coefficient profiles. Using these two definitions, we performed a comparative analysis of multisource satellite-derived plume height products for wildfire smoke. We provide a discussion related to which satellite product is most appropriate for determining plume height characteristics near a fire event or estimating downwind plume rise equivalent height, under multiple aerosol loadings. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the sensitivity of different passive remote-sensing techniques on space-based wildfire smoke plume height observations, in order to resolve ambiguity surrounding the concept of “effective smoke plume height”. As additional aerosol-observing satellites are planned in the coming years, our results will inform future remote-sensing missions and EO satellite algorithm development. This bridges the gap between satellite observations and plume rise modeling to further investigate the vertical distribution of wildfire smoke aerosols.more » « less
-
ABSTRACT Clouds and their associated radiative effects are a large source of uncertainty in global climate models. One region with particularly large model biases in shortwave cloud radiative effects (CRE) is the Southern Ocean. Previous research has shown that many dynamical “cloud controlling factors” influence shortwave CRE on monthly time scales and that two important cloud controlling factors over the Southern Ocean are midtropospheric vertical velocity and estimated inversion strength (EIS). Model errors may thus arise from biases in representing cloud controlling factors (atmospheric dynamics) or in representing how clouds respond to those cloud controlling factors (cloud parameterizations), or some combination thereof. This study extends previous work by examining cloud controlling factors over the Southern Ocean on daily time scales in both observations and global climate models. This allows the cloud controlling factors to be examined in the context of transient weather systems. Composites of EIS and midtropospheric vertical velocity are constructed around extratropical cyclones and anticyclones to examine how the different dynamical cloud controlling factors influence shortwave CRE around midlatitude weather systems and to assess how models compare to observations. On average, models tend to produce a realistic cyclone and anticyclone, when compared to observations, in terms of the dynamical cloud controlling factors. The difference between observations and models instead lies in how the models’ shortwave CRE respond to the dynamics. In particular, the models’ shortwave CRE are too sensitive to perturbations in midtropospheric vertical velocity and, thus, they tend to produce clouds that excessively brighten in the frontal region of the cyclone and excessively dim in the center of the anticyclone.more » « less
