Thursday, 18 July 2002: 3:30 PM
Baroclinic Ekman layer
Earlier studies of the depths of geophysical boundary layers basically
focused of the effects of rotation and density stratification. One more
inherent feature of geophysical flows, namely the fact that they are nearly
always baroclinic rather than barotropic, was not taken into account in the
known formulations. The present paper makes up for this deficiency. A new
equation for the neutral baroclinic Ekman boundary-layer depth is derived
and validated against data from large eddy simulations (LES). The latter
are generated using a new code specifically designed for modelling of
neutral and stable boundary layers. Results from the comparison show an
excellent correspondence between the proposed equation and LES data.
Supplementary URL: