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Dynamical cores used to study the circulation of the atmosphere employ various numerical methods ranging from finite‐volume, spectral element, global spectral, and hybrid methods. In this work, we explore the use of Flux‐Differencing Discontinuous Galerkin (FDDG) methods to simulate a fully compressible dry atmosphere at various resolutions. We show that the method offers a judicious compromise between high‐order accuracy and stability for large‐eddy simulations and simulations of the atmospheric general circulation. In particular, filters, divergence damping, diffusion, hyperdiffusion, or sponge‐layers are not required to ensure stability; only the numerical dissipation naturally afforded by FDDG is necessary. We apply the method to the simulation of dry convection in an atmospheric boundary layer and in a global atmospheric dynamical core in the standard benchmark of Held and Suarez (1994,https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1994)075〈1825:apftio〉2.0.co;2).

 

The meridional temperature profile of the upper layers of planetary atmospheres is set through a balance between differential radiative heating by a nearby star, or by intrinsic heat fluxes emanating from the deep interior, and the redistribution of that heat across latitudes by turbulent flows. These flows spontaneously arise through baroclinic instability of the meridional temperature gradients maintained by the forcing. When planetary curvature is neglected, this turbulence takes the form of coherent vortices that mix the meridional temperature profiles. However, the curvature of the planet favors the emergence of Rossby waves and zonal jets that restrict the meridional wandering of the fluid columns, thereby reducing the mixing efficiency across latitudes. A similar situation arises in the ocean, where the baroclinic instability of zonal currents leads to enhanced meridional heat transport by a turbulent flow consisting of vortices and zonal jets. A recent scaling theory for the turbulent heat transport by vortices is extended to include the impact of planetary curvature, in the framework of the two‐layer quasi‐geostrophic beta‐plane model. This leads to a quantitative parameterization providing the meridional temperature profile in terms of the externally imposed heat flux in an idealized model of planetary atmospheres and oceans. In addition, it provides a quantitative prediction for the emergent criticality, that is, the degree of instability in a canonical model of planetary atmosphere or ocean.

 

We numerically and theoretically investigate the Boussinesq Eady model, where a rapidly rotating density-stratified layer of fluid is subject to a meridional temperature gradient in thermal wind balance with a uniform vertically sheared zonal flow. Through a suite of numerical simulations, we show that the transport properties of the resulting turbulent flow are governed by quasigeostrophic (QG) dynamics in the rapidly rotating strongly stratified regime. The ‘vortex gas’ scaling predictions put forward in the context of the two-layer QG model carry over to this fully three-dimensional system: the functional dependence of the meridional flux on the control parameters is the same, the two adjustable parameters entering the theory taking slightly different values. In line with the QG prediction, the meridional heat flux is depth-independent. The vertical heat flux is such that turbulence transports buoyancy along isopycnals, except in narrow layers near the top and bottom boundaries, the thickness of which decreases as the diffusivities go to zero. The emergent (re)stratification is set by a simple balance between the vertical heat flux and diffusion along the vertical direction. Overall, this study demonstrates how the vortex-gas scaling theory can be adapted to quantitatively predict the magnitude and vertical structure of the meridional and vertical heat fluxes, and of the emergent stratification, without additional fitting parameters. 

Testing, contact tracing, and isolation (TTI) is an epidemic management and control approach that is difficult to implement at scale because it relies on manual tracing of contacts. Exposure notification apps have been developed to digitally scale up TTI by harnessing contact data obtained from mobile devices; however, exposure notification apps provide users only with limited binary information when they have been directly exposed to a known infection source. Here we demonstrate a scalable improvement to TTI and exposure notification apps that uses data assimilation (DA) on a contact network. Network DA exploits diverse sources of health data together with the proximity data from mobile devices that exposure notification apps rely upon. It provides users with continuously assessed individual risks of exposure and infection, which can form the basis for targeting individual contact interventions. Simulations of the early COVID-19 epidemic in New York City are used to establish proof-of-concept. In the simulations, network DA identifies up to a factor 2 more infections than contact tracing when both harness the same contact data and diagnostic test data. This remains true even when only a relatively small fraction of the population uses network DA. When a sufficiently large fraction of the population (≳ 75%) uses network DA and complies with individual contact interventions, targeting contact interventions with network DA reduces deaths by up to a factor 4 relative to TTI. Network DA can be implemented by expanding the computational backend of existing exposure notification apps, thus greatly enhancing their capabilities. Implemented at scale, it has the potential to precisely and effectively control future epidemics while minimizing economic disruption. 

Abstract Between 5% and 25% of the total momentum transferred between the atmosphere and ocean is transmitted via the growth of long surface gravity waves called “swell.” In this paper, we use large-eddy simulations to show that swell-transmitted momentum excites near-inertial waves and drives turbulent mixing that deepens a rotating, stratified, turbulent ocean surface boundary layer. We find that swell-transmitted currents are less effective at producing turbulence and mixing the boundary layer than currents driven by an effective surface stress. Overall, however, the differences between swell-driven and surface-stress-driven boundary layers are relatively minor. In consequence, our results corroborate assumptions made in Earth system models that neglect the vertical structure of swell-transmitted momentum fluxes and instead parameterize all air–sea momentum transfer processes with an effective surface stress. 

The mean state of the atmosphere and ocean is set through a balance between external forcing (radiation, winds, 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 eddy-induced turbulent transport of properties like heat, moisture, and carbon. In the linear stages, baroclinic instability generates flow structures at the Rossby deformation radius, a length scale of order 1,000 km in the atmosphere and 100 km in the ocean, smaller than the planetary scale and the typical extent of ocean basins, respectively. There is, therefore, a separation of scales between the large-scale gradient of properties like temperature and the smaller eddies that advect it randomly, inducing effective diffusion. Numerical solutions show that such scale separation remains in the strongly nonlinear turbulent regime, provided there is sufficient drag at the bottom of the atmosphere and ocean. We compute the scaling laws governing the eddy-driven transport associated with baroclinic turbulence. First, we provide a theoretical underpinning for empirical scaling laws reported in previous studies, for different formulations of the bottom drag law. Second, these scaling laws are shown to provide an important first step toward an accurate local closure to predict the impact of baroclinic turbulence in setting the large-scale temperature profiles in the atmosphere and ocean.