Antoon van Hooft (TU Delft) - Challenges in Stably Stratified Atmospheric Boundary Layers, Connecting Delft, Paris and Antarctica

This Seminar will briefly introduce the field of Research related to stably stratified atmospheric boundary layers. As with many complex physical systems, complexity is owed to the dynamical interplay between various processes that occur at different length and timescales. In order to increase our understanding of the nocturnal atmospheric dynamics and their predictability in operational weather models the scientific questions are approached by employing a variety of research tools. This entails conceptual modeling, Analysis of field observation data, Global climate modeling and turbulence resolving simulations with varying degrees of idealizations. The latter method is burdened with resolving all the length and timescales related to the relevant processes. We argue that this calls for more flexible numerical methods than are currently used by the atmospheric boundary layer community. Our first results indicate that the usage of adaptive grids hold a great promise to study the most challenging cases in atmospheric boundary layer research.

Authors: Antoon van Hooft, Stephane Popinet, Chiel van Heerwaarden, Steven van der Linden, Stephan de Roode, Bas van de Wiel.