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Characteristics of laboratory-scale bubble-driven buoyant plumes in a stably stratified quiescent fluid are studied using large-eddy simulation (LES). As a bubble plume entrains stratified ambient water, its net buoyancy decreases due to the increasing density difference between the entrained and ambient fluids. A large fraction of the entrained fluid eventually detrains and falls along an annular outer plume from a height of maximum rise (peel height) to a neutral buoyancy level (trap height), during which less buoyant scalars (e.g. small droplets) are trapped and dispersed horizontally, forming quasi-horizontal intrusion layers. The inner/outer double-plume structure and the peel/intrusion process are found to be more distinct for cases with small bubble rise velocity, while weak and unstable when the slip velocity is large. LES results are averaged to generate distributions of mean velocity and turbulent fluxes. These distributions provide data for assessing the performance of previously developed closures used in one-dimensional integral plume models. In particular, the various LES cases considered in this study yield consistent behaviour for the entrainment coefficients for various plume cases. Furthermore, a new continuous peeling model is derived based on the insights obtained from LES results. Comparing to previous peeling models, the new model behaves in a more self-consistent manner, and it is expected to provide more reliable performance when applied in integral plume models.

Oil spills from deep‐water blowouts rise through and interact with the ocean mixed layer and Langmuir turbulence, leading to considerable diversity of oil slick dilution patterns observed on the ocean surface. Certain conditions can drive oil droplet plumes to organize into distinct bands called windrows, inhibiting oil dilution. Observations of blurred or even diffused plumes are also common, but conditions under which these various dilution regimes emerge are not well understood. Here we use large eddy simulations to explain and quantify the dilution patterns and their dependence on relevant physical parameters. Two mechanisms, the downwelling and dilution due to Langmuir cells and the inhibition of dilution due to buoyancy of oil droplets, compete. This competition can be characterized by the ratio of Stokes drift to droplet rise velocity—the drift‐to‐buoyancy parameter, Db. We find that plume appearance and quantitative measures of relative dilution depend mainly on Db.

Once oil plumes such as those originating from underwater blowouts reach the ocean mixed layer (OML), their near-surface dispersion is influenced heavily by wind and wave-generated Langmuir turbulence. In this study, the complex oil spill dispersion process is modeled using large-eddy simulation (LES). The mean plume dispersion is characterized by performing statistical analysis of the resulting fields from the LES data. Although the instantaneous oil concentration exhibits high intermittency with complex spatial patterns such as Langmuir-induced striations, it is found that the time-averaged oil distribution can still be described quite well by smooth Gaussian-type plumes. LES results show that the competition between droplet rise velocity and vertical turbulent diffusion due to Langmuir turbulence is crucial in determining both the dilution rate and overall direction of transport of oil plumes in the OML. The smoothness of the mean plume makes it feasible to aim at modeling the oil dispersion using Reynolds-averaged type formulations, such as the K-profile parameterization (KPP) with sufficient vertical resolution to capture vertical profiles in the OML. Using LES data, we evaluate the eddy viscosity and eddy diffusivity following the KPP framework. We assess the performance of previous KPP models for pure shear turbulence and Langmuir turbulence by comparing them with the LES data. Based on the assessment a modified KPP model is proposed, which shows improved overall agreement with the LES results for both the eddy viscosity and the eddy diffusivity of the oil dispersion under a variety of flow conditions and droplet sizes.

We describe the salient features of a field study whose goals are to quantify the vertical distribution of plant-emitted hydrocarbons and their contribution to aerosol and cloud condensation nuclei production above a central Amazonian rain forest. Using observing systems deployed on a 50-m meteorological tower, complemented with tethered balloon deployments, the vertical distribution of hydrocarbons and aerosols was determined under different boundary layer thermodynamic states. The rain forest emits sufficient reactive hydrocarbons, such as isoprene and monoterpenes, to provide precursors of secondary organic aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei. Mesoscale convective systems transport ozone from the middle troposphere, enriching the atmospheric boundary layer as well as the forest canopy and surface layer. Through multiple chemical transformations, the ozone-enriched atmospheric surface layer can oxidize rain forest–emitted hydrocarbons. One conclusion derived from the field studies is that the rain forest produces the necessary chemical species and in sufficient amounts to undergo oxidation and generate aerosols that subsequently activate into cloud condensation nuclei.

Wind‐blown sand is the main driver of dune development and dust emission from soils and is thus of fundamental importance for geomorphology, ecology, climate, and air quality. Even though sand transport is driven by nonstationary turbulent winds, and is thus inherently intermittent, current parameterizations in atmospheric models assume stationary wind and continuous transport. We draw on extensive field measurements to show that neglecting saltation intermittency causes biases in the timing and intensity of predicted fluxes. We present a simple parameterization that accounts for saltation intermittency and produces substantially improved agreement against measurements. We investigate the implications of accounting for transport intermittency in atmospheric models by analyzing 35 years of hourly wind speed data from climate simulations. We show that accounting for intermittency leads to significantly different predictions of sand mass fluxes throughout the year, with potential implications for timing and intensity of dust emission.

.[1] In water resources it is common to consider that two scalars have a similar behavior in the atmospheric surface layer. This is a consequence of Monin-Obukhov similarity theory whose direct implication is that all similarity functions between two scalars are equal. However, many works show that scalar similarity does not always hold under unstable conditions, a fact for which it is often difficult to establish a physical cause. In this paper, using a data set measured during winter over a tropical lake in Brazil (Furnas Lake), we found a relation between temperature-water vapor similarity and the strength of the surface forcing; we also confirmed that the classical balance between gradient production and molecular dissipation of scalar variance and covariance is key to scalar similarity. This balance can be disrupted by large values of the third-order transport terms, and possibly by nonstationary terms as well. In connection with the scalar variance and covariance budgets, we propose a new set of dimensionless scalar flux numbers which are able to make a good diagnosis of the aforementioned balance (or the lack thereof) for each budget. The fact that different Monin-Obukhov functions are not equally capable of identifying scalar similarity is also demonstrated and a new bulk indicator of scalar flux similarity is proposed whose absolute value, unlike the relative transfer efficiency, is bounded above by 1; this new indicator holds also in the spectral domain. Finally, we verify that low-frequency dissimilarity has a larger impact over scalar similarity than over scalar flux similarity.

This paper presents a framework to simulate pollen dispersal by the wind based on the large eddy simulation (LES) technique. Important phenomena such as the pollen emission by the plants and the ground deposition are parameterized by the lower boundary condition. The numerical model is validated against previously published experiments of point source releases of glass beads and pollen grains in the atmospheric boundary layer. The numerical model is used together with experimental data of pollen emission and downwind deposition from a natural field obtained near Washington, DC, in the summer of 2006. The combined analysis of experimental and numerical data allows to elucidate the emission/transport/deposition process in considerable detail. In particular, the relative fractions of pollen deposited inside the source field and airborne at the edge of the field can be quantified. The use of LES allows quantification of important intermittent deposition events far from the source field.