The influence of a water surface on mesoscale dynamics as a function of atmospheric stability

✍ Scribed by Martin Beniston

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 888 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0006-8314
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00117456

✦ Synopsis

Several numerical experiments have been undertaken with a three-dimensional mesoscale model in order to determine to what extent a water surface such as a lake can influence mesoscale flow patterns.

It is shown that the influence of the lake is important when cumulus clouds are present. These clouds, generated by evaporation from the water surface are small but induce significant secondary circulations which disrupt the flow field on the mesoscale.

Artificial suppression of cloud activity results in a situation where the lake exerts little influence on the atmospheric environment in comparison to the control experiment where the body of water is absent. Atmospheric stability controls the intensity of perturbations to the mean flow when clouds are present.

The study is of interest when modeling a number of complex phenomena simultaneously; the results shown here indicate that under certain stability conditions, a small lake can be ignored as to its dynamic and thermodynamic influence on atmospheric processes, thus leading to a neglect of a number of equations taking into account moisture terms explicitly.