The entrainment rate at the top of the atmospheric boundary layer is affected by many processes, such as radiation, evaporation, and boundary layer circulation. An intercomparison of radiatively driven entrainment and turbulence in a smoke cloud (Bretherton et al. 1997) investigated an idealized case in which a convective boundary layer filled with radiatively active "smoke" is simulated by several 1D, 2D, and 3D models. The differences among the models are a result of different numerical representations of fluid motion and subgrid scale turbulence. We use this case to test our 1D turbulent closure model (TCM). Our TCM is based on third-moment turbulence closure. The results using our TCM indicates that the profiles of smoke, temperature, smoke flux, and heat flux agree well with 3D large-eddy simulations involved in the intercomparision. The entrainment velocity for our model is in better agreement with experiment than those for the 1D and 2D models involved in the intercomparision. Also, the results of our model are not sensitive to the vertical grid size. The entrainment velocity and other fields are almost identical for vertical grid sizes of 25 m and 12.5 m. The turbulent kinetic energy budget for our model agrees well with that of the high-resolution 3D
large-eddy simulation model involved in the intercomparison