Turbulence and diffusion in the atmosphere. Lectures in environmental sciences (Q4337994)

This textbook is the result of a series of lectures given by the author to senior and graduate level students at the University of Kiel. The purpose of the book is to introduce students and engineers to atmosphere modelling, to provide a physical background and prediction methods in this field, and to indicate some advanced topics. The material is divided into 10 chapters and 5 appendices; each chapter ends with a set of problems which are carefully selected to broaden the reader's understanding of the atmosphere models and basic mathematics. Chapter 1 ``The nature of turbulence'' is an introduction describing the basic topics of the turbulence theory (the Reynolds approach and averaging, the closure problem), and two-dimensional eddies in the atmosphere. The next two chapters, ``The Navier-Stokes equations'' and ``The neutral surface boundary layer'', highlight the role of the above equations in the turbulence modeling, including the invariants of fluid motion, the Reynolds number similarity, the averaging procedure, the atmospheric boundary layer and the wind distribution in the neutral surface layer. Chapter 4 ``The energy equations of turbulence'' presents in a general way three kinds of atmospheric energy: the energy of mean motion, the turbulent kinetic energy, and the thermodynamic internal energy; the reader can find detailed derivations of the corresponding energy equations in an appendix. Then, as the main atmospheric models used in the book, the author presents in chapters 5, 6 and 7 diabatic surface boundary layer, homogeneous stationary planetary boundary layer, and unconstrained boundary layer, respectively. Most of results discussed here are based on horizontally homogeneous mean conditions, the Ekman solution, and the surface heat balance equation. Chapters 8 and 9, ``Statistical representation of turbulence, I, II'', return in more detail to probabilistic characteristics of turbulence and to its distribution in the atmosphere under various meteorological conditions. This information helps to construct better models of mean flow and to estimate the diffusion of species emitted from chimneys, automobiles, and other industrial sources. The final chapter ``Turbulent diffusion from discrete sources'' uses the above technique to develop the theory of smoke plumes and to predict the shape and behaviour of the smoke plumes or industrial cloud puffs by employing the Monte Carlo method. In addition, two diskettes provided with this publication contain computer programs written by the author for numerical simulation of the time-dependent one-dimensional planetary boundary layer, and of the smoke plumes. The book is, undoubtedly, a good contribution to atmospheric hydrodynamics, and a very useful education tool.