14th Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics

Monday, 9 June 2003
Review of Spectral Transfer in Inhomogeneous Turbulence for Atmosphere-Ocean System
Sukaran Ram Patel, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande-UFCG, Campina Grande, Brazil
Atmospheric surface layer is the active link between atmosphere and the surface of the earth. Thus its ability to transport momentum, sensible heat, water vapor and other constituents is of fundamental importance in all studies related to land surface/atmosphere as well as ocean/atmosphere exchange processes, including parameterization in the global circulation models. The Monin-Obukhov similarity theory (MOST) is one of the most powerful tools in describing the physical properties of the atmospheric boundary layer. The MOST apply not only to the mean profiles of the meteorological parameters but also to the ststistical quantities and the spectral behavior of turbulence. Further the refractive index spectrum in the dissipation range is important to atmospheric optical propagation studies of both weak and very strong scintillation (Gerald and Hill, 1989) and is also a Monin-Obukhov simirarity function (Hill, 1989). Also, the Monin-Obukhov similarity emperical functions are now used routinely in many practical applications (Hill, 1989). There are several studies for the Monin-Obukhov similarity theory for homogeneous boundary layer but very few for horizontly inhomogeneous surfaces because of their obvious difficulties. To avoid these problems most field experiments have been performed in carefully chosen homogeneous conditions. But in fact the atmosphere-ocean system occurs in inhomogeneous surfaces. These motivate the study of various aspects of the spectral transfers of the similarity functions in inhomogeneous turbulence for atmosphere-ocean system, as this is one of the several processes occurring in the turbulent motion. In this study, two-point spectral equations for different combinations of the similarity functions are constructed and reviewed and further, it is shown that that the certain terms of these equations can be interpreted as transfer terms even for general inhomogeneous turbulence. Further some applications of certain spectral transfer terms are discussed.

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