Flux gradient relations and their dependence on turbulence anisotropy

Abstract

Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (MOST) is used in virtually every Earth System Model (ESM) to parameterize the near-surface turbulent exchanges, however there is high uncertainty in the literature about the appropriate parameterizations to be used. In addition, MOST has limitations in very stable and unstable regimes, over heterogeneous terrain and complex orography, and has been found to incorrectly represent the surface fluxes. A new approach including turbulence anisotropy as a scaling parameter has recently been developed, allowing to overcome these limitations and generalize the flux-variance relations to complex terrain. In this paper we analyze the flux-gradient relations for five well known datasets. The scaling relations show substantial scatter and highlight the uncertainty in the choice of parameterization even over canonical conditions. We show that by including information on turbulence anisotropy as an additional scaling parameter, the original scatter becomes well bounded and new formulations can be developed, that drastically improve the accuracy of the flux-gradient relations for wind shear ($ϕ_M$) in unstable conditions, and for temperature gradient ($ϕ_H$) both in unstable and stable regime. This analysis shows that both $ϕ_M$ and $ϕ_H$ are strongly dependent on turbulence anisotropy and allows to finally settle the longly discussed free convection regime for $ϕ_M$, which clearly exhibits a $-{1/3}$ power law when anisotropy is accounted for. Furthermore we show that the eddy diffusivities for momentum and heat and the turbulent Prandtl number are strongly dependent on anisotropy and that the latter goes to zero in the free convection limit. These results highlight the necessity to include anisotropy in the study of near surface atmospheric turbulence and lead the way for theoretically more robust simulations of the boundary layer over complex terrain.