Website header

Geophysical turbulence program

Research on turbulence has been a significant part of the NCAR scientific program since its beginning in the early 1960s. The original scientific leaders of NCAR recognized that to understand the dynamics of the atmosphere, the oceans, the climate, the sun, and solar-terretrial interactions, understanding relevant turbulent processes would be essential. A number of scientific appointments in the first 10-15 years of NCAR's existence reflected this view and provided an in-house base from which to productively interact and collaborate with the world turbulence community. From these beginnings, a sustained emphasis on geophysical turbulence at NCAR has emerged in research, visitors, seminars, and workshops that continues to this day. Most of this emphasis manifests itself currently in the Geophysical Turbulence Program (GTP).

Structure of thermal convection over a heated plane. Vertical velocities after six hours of simulated time are shown within the boundary layer depth; bright and dark volumes denote updrafts and downdrafts, respectively. The only difference between the solutions in the left and right panels are the values of viscosity in the horizontal entries of the stress tensor, respectively, 2.5 versus 70 meter-squared per second. These results are part of research that addresses numerical effects that influence the structure of simulated convection in the planetary boundary layer, which becomes an increasingly important issue as numerical weather prediction models use increasingly higher resolutions.

By design, GTP is an interdiscplinary group of about 40 members that spans many divisions and laboratories at NCAR with a few external affiliates. It encompasses research at NCAR on multi-scale nonlinear processes with an array of applications in a broad variety of areas. GTP is also the outreach arm of this research, and is complementary to the Turbulence Numerics Team.

In FY2008, GTP sponsored eight seminars and hosted five long-term (greater that 1 week) visitors. Several of these visitors were students, where the research conducted formed part of the students' graduate requirements. The topics covered in collaboration with NCAR staff represent a broad variety of interests:

In FY2009, GTP will continue organizing workshops, holding seminars, and hosting short-term and long-term visitors. It will also provide a small amount of funds for a short (summer) visit by one or two graduate students who support the scientific agenda of research in multi-scale physics for geophysical flows.

GTP activities advance NCAR's strategic priorities of "Conducting computer science, computational science, applied mathematics, statistics, and numerical methods R&D" and "Engaging a broader and more diverse community in the atmospheric and geosciences." GTP activities are sponsored entirely by the NSF cooperative agreement through UCAR.