Abstract
For the near-calm stable boundary layer, nominally 2-m mean wind speed <0.5 ms−1, the time-average turbulent flux is dominated by infrequent mixing events. These events are related to accelerations associated with wave-like motions and other more complex small-scale motions. In this regime, the relationship between the fluxes and the weak mean flow breaks down. Such near-calm conditions are common at some sites. For very weak winds and strong stratification, the characteristics of the fluctuating quantities change slowly with increasing scale and the separation between the turbulence and non-turbulent motions can become ambiguous. Therefore, a new analysis strategy is developed based on the scale dependence of selected flow characteristics, such as the ratio of the fluctuating potential energy to the kinetic energy. In contrast to more developed turbulence, correlations between fluctuating quantities are small, and a significant heat flux is sometimes carried by very weak vertical motions with large temperature fluctuations. The relation of the flux events to small-scale increases of wind speed is examined. Large remaining uncertainties are noted.
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Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges important comments from Christoph Thomas, Dean Vickers and Andrey Grachev. The FLOSSII and CASES-99 data were provided by the Integrated Surface Flux Facility of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This material is based upon work supported by NSF Grant ATM-0607842 and ARO Contract W911FN05C0067.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Mahrt, L. The Near-Calm Stable Boundary Layer. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 140, 343–360 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-011-9616-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-011-9616-2
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