Journal article
Idealized Mesoscale Model Simulations of Open Cellular Convection Over the Sea
CL Vincent, AN Hahmann, MC Kelly
Boundary Layer Meteorology | Published : 2012
Abstract
The atmospheric conditions during an observed case of open cellular convection over the North Sea were simulated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) numerical model. Wind, temperature and water vapour mixing ratio profiles from the WRF simulation were used to initialize an idealized version of the model, which excluded the effects of topography, surface inhomogeneities and large-scale weather forcing. Cells with an average diameter of 17. 4 km developed. Simulations both with and without a capping inversion were made, and the cell-scale kinetic energy budget was calculated for each case. By considering all sources of explicit diffusion in the model, the budgets were balanced. In..
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Awarded by Natur og Univers, Det Frie Forskningsråd
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was partly supported by the Danish project 'Mesoscale variability and the variability of wind and production of offshore wind farms' (contract number PSO-7141), the Danish ForskEL programme through the project 'Radar@Sea' (ForskEL 2009-01-0226) and the European Commission project 'Safewind' (contract number 213740). The contribution of C. L. Vincent was partly supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research-Technology and Production Sciences (case number 10-093196) individual post-doctoral project. The authors are grateful to Dong Energy and Vattenfall for permission to use observational data from the Horns Rev I wind farm, and to Dr. Jason Knievel of NCAR for advice about the initial set-up of the idealized model. Detailed and helpful comments from the two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated.