Some Characteristics of the Surface Boundary Layer of a Strong Cold Air Process over Southern China

In southern China, cold air is a common weather process during the winter season; it can cause strong wind, sharp temperature decreases, and even the snow or freezing rain events. However, the features of the atmospheric boundary layer during cold air passage are not clearly understood due to the lack of comprehensive observation data, especially regarding turbulence. In this study, four-layer gradient meteorological observation data and one-layer, 10-Hz ultrasonic anemometer-thermometer monitoring data from the northern side of Poyang Lake were employed to study the main features of the surface boundary layer during a strong cold-air passage over southern China. The results show that, with the passage of a cold air front, the wind speed exhibits low-frequency variations and that the wind systematically descends. During the strong wind period, the wind speed increases with height in the surface layer. Regular gust packets are superimposed on the basic strong wind flow. Before the passage of cold air, the wind gusts exhibit a coherent structure. The wind and turbulent momentum fluxes are small, although the gusty wind momentum flux is slightly larger than the turbulent momentum flux. However, during the invasion of cold air, both the gusty wind and turbulent momentum fluxes increase rapidly with wind speed, and the turbulent momentum flux is larger than the gusty wind momentum flux during the strong wind period. After the cold air invasion, this structure almost disappears.

Gusty wind disturbances and large-scale turbulent structures in the neutral atmospheric surface layer

This study analyzes the contribution of large-scale turbulent structures, including very large-scale and large-scale motions, to the streamwise turbulent kinetic energy and momentum flux in comparison with the contribution of the gusty wind disturbances based on the high-quality data obtained from the field measurements conducted in the near-neutral surface layer. The results of this study denote that the gusty wind disturbances contain only a portion of the energy contained in very large-scale motions and do not contain any of the information contained in large-scale motions. The amount of lost contributions to the streamwise turbulent kinetic energy and momentum flux increases linearly with the friction velocity, eventually becoming 53% and 67%,respectively. This indicates that large-scale turbulent structures(very large-scale motions and large-scale motions) better describe the coherent structures in the atmospheric surface layer when compared with the gusty wind disturbances.

Power Extraction Performance of a Semi-activated Flapping Foil in Gusty Flow

A numerical investigation on the power extraction performance of a semi-activated flapping foil in gusty flow is conducted by using the commercial software FLUENT. The foil is forced to pitch around the axis at one-third chord and heave in the vertical direction due to the period lift force. Different from previous work with uniform flow, an unsteady flow with cosinusoidal velocity profile is considered in this work. At a Reynolds number of 1100, the influences of the mechanical parameters （spring constant and damping coefficient）, the amplitude and frequency of the pitching motion, the amplitude of the gust fluctuation and the phase difference between the pitching motion and the gusty flow on the power extraction performance are systematically investigated. Compared with the case of uniform flow, the capability energy harvesting of the system is enhanced by the introduction of the gusty flow. For a given pitching amplitude and frequency, the power extraction efficiency increases with the gust fluctuation amplitude. Moreover, with an optimal phase difference between pitch and gust （φ = 180°）, the efficiency can be further enhanced due to the generation of high lift force.

Marine-Atmospheric Boundary Layer Characteristics over the South China Sea During the Passage of Strong Typhoon Hagupit

The structures and characteristics of the marine-atmospheric boundary layer over the South China Sea during the passage of strong Typhoon Hagupit are analyzed in detail in this paper. The typhoon was generated in the western Pacific Ocean, and it passed across the South China Sea, finally landfalling in the west of Guangdong Province. The shortest distance between the typhoon center and the observation station on Zhizi Island （10 m in height） is 8.5 km. The observation data capture the whole of processes that occurred in the regions of the typhoon eye, two squall regions of the eye wall, and weak wind regions, before and after the typhoon’s passage. The results show that： （a） during the strong wind （average velocityˉu≧10 m s？1） period, in the atmospheric boundary layer below 110 m, ˉu is almost independent of height, and vertical velocity ˉw is greater than 0, increasing with ˉu and reaching 2–4 m s？1 in the squall regions;（b） the turbulent fl uctuations （frequency＆gt;1/60 Hz） and gusty disturbances （frequency between 1/600 and 1/60 Hz） are both strong and anisotropic, but the anisotropy of the turbulent fl uctuations is less strong;（c） ˉu can be used as the basic parameter to parameterize all the characteristics of fl uctuations;and （d） the vertical fl ux of horizontal momentum contributed by the average fl ow （ˉu＆#183; ˉw） is one order of magnitude larger than those contributed by fl uctuation fl uxes （u＆#39;w＆#39; and v＆#39;w＆#39;）, implying that strong wind may have seriously disturbed the sea surface through drag force and downward transport of eddy momentum and generated large breaking waves, leading to formation of a strongly coupled marine-atmospheric boundary layer. This results in ˉw ＆gt; 0 in the atmosphere, and some portion of the momentum in the sea may be fed back again to the atmosphere due to ˉu ＆#183; ˉw＆gt;0.