An analytical verification test for numerically simulated convective flow above a thermally heterogeneous surface
Abstract
An analytical solution of the Boussinesq equations for the motion of a viscous stably stratified fluid driven by a surface thermal forcing with large horizontal gradients (step changes) is obtained. This analytical solution is one of the few available for wall-bounded buoyancy-driven flows. The solution can be used to verify that computer codes for Boussinesq fluid system simulations are free of errors in formulation of wall boundary conditions and to evaluate the relative performances of competing numerical algorithms. Because the solution pertains to flows driven by a surface thermal forcing, one of its main applications may be for testing the no-slip, impermeable wall boundary conditions for the pressure Poisson equation. Examples of such tests are presented.
Type
Publication
Geoscientific Model Development, 8(6), 1809–1819
Authors
Physical Scientist
I am a Physical Scientist at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory. My research includes computational and theoretical studies of atmospheric boundary-layer flows, turbulence modeling, land-surface modeling, parameterization of boundary-layer and surface-layer interactions, and multi-scale numerical weather prediction. I am currently working on projects to improve atmospheric models in the areas of scale-aware boundary-layer physics, heterogeneous boundary layers, and other storm-scale phenomena.