An evaporation duct prediction model coupled with the MM5

Abstract

Evaporation duct is an abnormal refractive phenomenon in the marine atmosphere boundary layer. It has been generally accepted that the evaporation duct prominently affects the performance of the electronic equipment over the sea because of its wide distribution and frequent occurrence. It has become a research focus of the navies all over the world. At present, the diagnostic models of the evaporation duct are all based on the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory, with only differences in the flux and character scale calculations in the surface layer. These models are applicable to the stationary and uniform open sea areas without considering the alongshore effect. This paper introduces the nonlinear factor α _v and the gust wind item w _g into the Babin model, and thus extends the evaporation duct diagnostic model to the offshore area under extremely low wind speed. In addition, an evaporation duct prediction model is designed and coupled with the fifth generation mesoscale model (MM5). The tower observational data and radar data at the Pingtan island of Fujian Province on May 25–26, 2002 were used to validate the forecast results. The outputs of the prediction model agree with the observations from 0 to 48 h. The relative error of the predicted evaporation duct height is 19.3% and the prediction results are consistent with the radar detection.