Characterizing Atmospheric Boundary Layer Turbulence

Speaker: Dr. Sukanta Basu, Atmospheric Science Group, Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University, TexasAbstract:Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) spans the lowest few hundred meters of the earth's atmosphere and intensively exchanges mass (e.g., water vapor, pollutants), momentum, and heat with the underlying earth's surface. ABL has immense practical importance as wide ranges of industrial (e.g., stack gas dispersion, wind energy generation), biological (e.g., pollen transport and deposition), natural (e.g., dust devil formation), and meteorological (e.g., cloud formation) activities take place in this turbulent layer. At the same time, owing to its high Reynolds number, ABL plays a critical role in advancing fundamental turbulence research. For decades, it has been a favorite playground for the theoretical physics community for testing a variety of universal scaling and similarity hypotheses.
My research group at Texas Tech University tries to gain a better understanding of ABL turbulence by synergistically combining new-generation modeling approaches (e.g., large-eddy simulation), observational techniques (e.g., small-aperture scintillometry), and by borrowing a suite of tools from the emergent field of complex systems. In this talk, I present a mélange of ongoing research projects ranging from large-eddy simulation of nighttime boundary layers to flux measurements involving scintillometry, from multi-scale numerical weather prediction to synthetic inflow generation for wind turbine design, and from characterization of low-level jets to portable high-performance computing using MatlabMPI.

Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes