The Namib Turbulence Experiment: Investigating surface-atmosphere heat transfer in three dimensions

The Namib Turbulence EXperiment (NamTEX) was a multi-national micrometeorological campaign conducted in the Central Namib Desert to investigate three-dimensional surface layer turbulence and the spatio-temporal patterns of heat transfer between the sub-surface, surface, and atmosphere. The Namib provides an ideal location for fundamental research that revisits some key assumptions in micrometeorology that are implicitly included in the parameterizations describing energy exchange in weather forecasting and climate models: Homogenous flat surfaces, no vegetation, little moisture, and cloud-free skies create a strong and consistent diurnal forcing, resulting in a wide range of atmospheric stabilities. A novel combination of instruments was used to simultaneously measure variables and processes relevant to heat transfer: A three km fibre-optic distributed temperature sensor (DTS) was suspended in a pseudo-three-dimensional array within a 300 m x 300 m domain to provide vertical cross-sections of air temperature fluctuations. Aerial and ground-based thermal imagers recorded high resolution surface temperature fluctuations within the domain and revealed the spatial thermal imprint of atmospheric structures responsible for heat exchange. High-resolution soil temperature and moisture profiles together with heat flux plates provided information on near-surface soil dynamics. Turbulent heat exchange was measured with a vertical array of five eddy-covariance point measurements on a 21-m mast, as well as by co-located small- and large-aperture scintillometers. This contribution first details the scientific goals and experimental set-up of the NamTEX campaign. Then using a typical day, we demonstrate i) the coupling of surface layer, surface, and soil temperatures using high-frequency temperature measurements, ii) differences in spatial and temporal standard deviations of the horizontal temperature field using spatially distributed measurements, and iii) horizontal anisotropy of the turbulent temperature field.

Investigation of the Mixing Height in the Planetary Boundary Layer by Using Sodar and Microwave Radiometer Data

The height of the mixing layer is a significant parameter for describing the dynamics of the planetary boundary layer (PBL), especially for air quality control and for the parametrizations in numerical modeling. The problem is that the heights of the mixing layer cannot be measured directly. The values of this parameter are depending both on the applied algorithms for calculation and on the measuring instruments which have been used by the data source. To determine the height of a layer of intense turbulent heat exchange, data were used from acoustic meteorological locator (sodar) and from a passive single-channel scanning microwave radiometer MTP-5 (MWR) to measure the temperature profile in a layer of up to 1 km. Sodar can provide information on the structure of temperature turbulence in the PBL directly. These data have been compared with the mixing layer height calculated with the Parcel method by using the MTP-5 data. For the analysis, July and September 2020 were selected in the city of Tomsk in Siberia as characteristic periods of mid-summer and the transition period to autumn. The measurement results, calculations and inter-comparisons are shown and discussed in this work. During temperature inversions in the boundary layer, it was observed that turbulent heat transfer (increased dispersion of air temperature) is covering the inversion layers and the overlying ones. Moreover, this phenomenon is not only occurring during the morning destruction of inversions, but also in the process of their formation and development.

Climate change and heat exchange between atmosphere and ocean in the Arctic based on data from the Barents and the Kara sea

The paper investigates the current regime of turbulent heat exchange with the atmosphere over the Barents and Kara Seas, as well as its spatial, seasonal and temporal variability (1979–2018). It is shown that over the past decades, the areas of the location of the centers of maximum energy exchange between the sea surface and the atmosphere have not changed significantly in comparison with the middle and second half of the XX century. It was revealed that the greatest seasonal and synoptic variability of heat fluxes is typical of the central and western parts of the Barents Sea. It was found that both indicators of variability in the cold season are 2–5 and more times higher than in the warm season, and the spatial heterogeneity of the indicators of variability in winter is about twice as large as in summer. Quantitative estimates have shown that, within the Barents Sea, the spatial variability of fluxes in winter may be 5–10 times or more higher than the summer values. Above the Kara Sea, the greatest heterogeneity in the fluxes field is typical of the autumn and early winter seasons. It has been found that the annual sums of heat fluxes from the surface of the Barents Sea exceed the values for the Kara Sea, on average, 3–4 and 5–6 times, for sensible and latent heat fluxes, respectively, and in some years may differ tens of times. For the period under study, a single trend of the integral fluxes over the water area and their annual magnitude is not expressed, although there are multi-year decadal fluctuations. It is shown that, despite the significant difference in the thermal regime of the Barents and Kara seas and the lower atmosphere above them, the interannual changes in the total turbulent flows are quite well synchronized, which indicates the commonality of large-scale hydrometeorological processes in these seas, which affect the energy exchange between the seas and the atmosphere.

How Well Can Land-Surface Models Represent the Diurnal Cycle of Turbulent Heat Fluxes?

The diurnal cycle of solar radiation represents the strongest energetic forcing and dominates the exchange of heat and mass of the land surface with the atmosphere. This diurnal heat redistribution represents a core of land–atmosphere coupling that should be accurately represented in land surface models (LSMs), which are critical parts of weather and climate models. We employ a diagnostic model evaluation approach using a signature-based metric that describes the diurnal variation of heat fluxes. The metric is obtained by decomposing the diurnal variation of surface heat fluxes into their direct response and the phase lag to incoming solar radiation. We employ the output of 13 different LSMs driven with meteorological forcing of 20 FLUXNET sites (PLUMBER dataset). All LSMs show a poor representation of the evaporative fraction and thus the diurnal magnitude of the sensible and latent heat flux under cloud-free conditions. In addition, we find that the diurnal phase of both heat fluxes is poorly represented. The best performing model only reproduces 33% of the evaluated evaporative conditions across the sites. The poor performance of the diurnal cycle of turbulent heat exchange appears to be linked to how models solve for the surface energy balance and redistribute heat into the subsurface. We conclude that a systematic evaluation of diurnal signatures is likely to help to improve the simulated diurnal cycle, better represent land–atmosphere interactions, and therefore improve simulations of the near-surface climate.

The Opposing Effects of Reforestation and Afforestation on the Diurnal Temperature Cycle at the Surface and in the Lowest Atmospheric Model Level in the European Summer

The biophysical effects of reforestation and afforestation (herein jointly called re/afforestation) on the diurnal temperature cycle in European summer are investigated by analyzing a regional climate model (RCM) ensemble, established within the Land Use and Climate Across Scales Flagship Pilot Study (LUCAS FPS). With this RCM ensemble, two idealized experiments are performed for Europe, one with a continent with maximized forest cover, and one in which all forests are turned into grassland. First, an in-depth analysis of one ensemble member (“CCLM-VEG3D”) is carried out, to reveal the complex process chain caused by such land use changes (LUCs). From these findings, the whole ensemble is analyzed and principal biophysical effects of re/afforestation are derived. Results show that the diurnal temperature range is reduced at the surface (top of the vegetation) with re/afforestation. Most RCMs simulate colder surface temperatures Tsurf during the day and warmer Tsurf during the night. Thus, for the first time, the principal temperature interrelations found in observation-based studies in the midlatitudes could be reproduced within a model intercomparison study. On the contrary, the diurnal temperature range in the lowest atmospheric model level (Tair) is increased with re/afforestation. This opposing temperature response is mainly caused by the higher surface roughness of forest, enhancing the turbulent heat exchange. Furthermore, these opposing temperature responses demonstrate that the use of the diagnostic 2-m temperature (weighted interpolation between Tsurf and Tair) has a limited potential to assess the effects of re/afforestation. Thus, studies about the biophysical impacts of LUCs should investigate the whole near-surface temperature profile.

Turbulent heat exchange characterisics in sea ice ridges areas

The studies of the features of turbulent heat exchange were carried out for the first time in domestic practice near ice ridge areas of sea ice using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as part of the expedition "Transarktika-2019" onboard the R/V “Akademik Tryoshnikov”. An original measuring complex designed in AARI, was used to assess the characteristics of the ice surface (ice ridges, flat areas of ice). This made it possible to obtain comparative estimates of the albedo and surface temperature of different morphometric structures of the sections of the ice field, where the expedition's ice camp was organized. Measurements of air temperature and wind velocity were carried in the atmospheric surface layer on flat snow-covered areas of sea ice out from the windward and leeward sides of the ridge in parallel with the UAV flights. As a result of the experiments, it was found that the ice ridges areas have a lower albedo and surface temperature compared to neighboring areas of flat sea ice on average. Turbulent heat fluxes from the windward side of the hummock ridge exceed similar values recorded from the leeward side under conditions of unstable stratification in the atmospheric surface layer and exceed the fluxes calculated for conditions of flat ice on the sections with absence of hummocks, on average. In total, the nature and intensity of turbulent heat conduction in the ice ridges area differs from the analogous values observed on the flat sea ice cover. It is possible that the assessment of heat conduction with the atmosphere requires a certain revision, against the background (within the conditions) of thin first-year ice increasing which is more prone to hummocking than multi-year ice.

Insights into the effect of spatial and temporal flow variations on turbulent heat exchange at a mountain glacier

Multi-scale interactions between the glacier surface, the overlying atmosphere and the surrounding alpine terrain are highly complex. The high heterogeneity of boundary layer processes that couple these systems drives temporally and spatially variable energy fluxes and melt rates. A comprehensive measurement campaign, the HEFEX (Hintereisferner Experiment), was conducted during the summer of 2018. The aim of this experiment was to investigate spatial and temporal dynamics of the near-surface boundary layer and associated heat exchange processes close to the glacier surface during the melting season. The experimental setup of five meteorological stations was designed to capture the spatial and temporal characteristics of the local wind system on the glacier and to quantify the contribution of horizontal heat advection from surrounding ice-free areas to the local energy flux variability at the glacier. Turbulence data suggest that the temporal change in the local wind system strongly affect the micrometeorology at the glacier. Low-level katabatic flows were persistently measured during both night time and daytime and were responsible for consistently low near-surface air temperatures with small spatial variations at the glacier. On the contrary, local turbulence profiles of momentum and heat revealed strong changes of the local thermodynamic characteristics at the glacier when larger-scale westerly flows disturbed the prevailing katabatic flow forming low-level across-glacier flows. Warm air advection from the surrounding ice-free areas significantly increased near-surface air-temperatures at the glacier, with strong horizontal temperature gradients from the peripheral zones towards the centerline of the glacier. Despite generally lower near-surface wind speeds during the across-glacier flow, peak horizontal heat advection from the peripheral zones towards the centerline and strong transport of turbulence from higher atmospheric layers downward resulted in enhanced turbulent heat exchange towards the glacier surface at the glacier centerline. Thus, at the centerline of the glacier the exposure to strong larger-scale westerly winds promoted heat exchange processes at the glacier surface potentially contributing to ice melt. On the contrary, at the peripheral zones of the glacier turbulence data indicate that stronger sheltering from the larger-scale flows allowed the preservation of a katabatic jet, which suppressed the efficiency of the across-glacier flow to drive heat exchange towards the glacier surface by decoupling low-level atmospheric layers from the flow aloft. To explain the origin of the across-glacier flow would however require large eddy simulations.