Similarity Relationships in the Marine Atmospheric Surface Layer for Terms in the TKE and Scalar Variance Budgets

Abstract

Measurements of the momentum, heat, moisture, energy, and scalar variance fluxes are combined with dissipation estimates to investigate the behavior of marine surface layer turbulence. These measurements span a wide range of atmospheric stability conditions and provide estimates of z/L between ?8 and 1. Second- and third-order velocity differences are first used to provide an estimate of the Kolmogorov constant equal to 0.53 ± 0.04. The fluxes and dissipation estimates are then used to provide Monin?Obukhov (MO) similarity relationships of the various terms in the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and scalar variance (SV) budgets. These relationships are formulated to have the correct limiting forms in extremely stable and convective conditions. The analyses concludes with a determination of updated dimensionless structure function parameters for use with the inertial?dissipation flux method. The production of TKE is found to balance its dissipation in convective conditions and to exceed dissipation by up to 17% in near-neutral conditions. This imbalance is investigated using the authors? measurements of the energy flux and results in parameterizations for the energy flux and energy transport term in the TKE budget. The form of the dimensionless energy transport and dimensionless dissipation functions are very similar to previous parameterizations. From these measurements, it is concluded that the magnitude of energy transport (a loss of energy) is larger than the pressure transport (a gain of energy) in slightly unstable conditions. The dissipation of SV is found to closely balance production in near-neutral conditions. However, the SV budget can only be balanced in convective conditions by inclusion of the transport term. The SV transport term is derived using our estimates of the flux of SV and the derivative approach. The behavior of the derived function represents a slight loss of SV in near-neutral conditions and a gain in very unstable conditions. This finding is consistent with previous investigations. The similarity between these functions and recent overland results further suggests that experiments are generally above the region where wave-induced fluctuations influence the flow. The authors conclude that MO similarity theory is valid in the marine surface layer as long as it is applied to turbulence statistics taken above the wave boundary layer.