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Unravelling the turbulent structures of temperature variations during a gust front event: a case study

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Abstract

The simultaneous observations from a Doppler weather radar and an instrumented micrometeorological tower, offer an opportunity to dissect the effects of a gust front on the surface layer turbulence in a tropical convective boundary layer. We present a case study where a sudden drop in temperature was noted at heights within the surface layer during the passage of a gust front in the afternoon time. Consequently, this temperature drop created an interface which separated two different turbulent regimes. In one regime the turbulent temperature fluctuations were large and energetic, whereas in the other regime they were weak and quiescent. Given its uniqueness, we investigated the size distribution and aggregation properties of the turbulent structures related to these two regimes. We found that, the size distributions of the turbulent structures for both of these regimes displayed a clear power-law signature. Since power-laws are synonymous with scale-invariance, this indicated the passing of the gust front initiated a scale-free response which governed the turbulent characteristics of the temperature fluctuations. We propose a hypothesis to link such behaviour with the self-organized criticality as observed in the complex systems. However, the temporal organization of the turbulent structures, as indicated by their clustering tendencies, differed between these two regimes. For the regime corresponding to large temperature fluctuations, the turbulent structures were significantly clustered, whose clustering properties changed with height. Contrarily, for the other regime where the temperature fluctuations were weak, the turbulent structures remained less clustered with no discernible change being observed with height.

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Data Availability Statement

On reasonable request, the datasets analysed during the current study can be made available to the interested researchers by contacting Thara V Prabha (thara@tropmet.res.in). The computer codes needed to reproduce the figures are available by contacting the corresponding author Subharthi Chowdhuri at subharthi.cat@tropmet.res.in.

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Acknowledgements

Cloud Aerosol Interaction and Precipitation Enhancement Experiment (CAIPEEX) is conducted by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, which is an autonomous institute and fully funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. Authors are grateful to several colleagues who contributed to the success of the CAIPEEX project. The authors also acknowledge the local support and hospitality provided by N. B. Navale Sinhgad College of Engineering (NBNSCOE), Kegaon-Solapur, during the experiment. The author Subharthi Chowdhuri expresses his gratitude to Dr. Tirtha Banerjee and Dr. Tamás Kalmár-Nagy for many fruitful discussions on the concepts of persistence, zero-crossing densities, and SOC phenomenon. The helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers are also gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Dr. Homi Bhaba Road, Pashan, Pune, 411008, India

    Subharthi Chowdhuri, Kiran Todekar, Palani Murugavel & Thara V. Prabha

  2. Savitribai Phule Pune University, Ganeshkhind, Pune, 411007, India

    Anandakumar Karipot

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  1. Subharthi Chowdhuri
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Contributions

The authors Subharthi Chowdhuri and Thara V Prabha conceptualized the study. The data collection was performed by Subharthi Chowdhuri, Kiran Todekar, Anand K Karipot, and Palani Murugavel. All the analyses for the paper were carried out by Subharthi Chowdhuri. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Subharthi Chowdhuri and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Subharthi Chowdhuri.

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Chowdhuri, S., Todekar, K., Murugavel, P. et al. Unravelling the turbulent structures of temperature variations during a gust front event: a case study. Environ Fluid Mech 21, 263–281 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-020-09769-z

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