EARTHSC 2C03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Leading Edge, Planetary Boundary Layer, Advection
15 Feb 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Surface climates of canada, bailey et al. , 1997, page 45 67. Land surface is a complex mosaic of different surfaces such as grass land, crops, forests etc. Spatial variability is closely linked to scale. A surface that can be treated as homogenous in relation to small-scale meteorological phenomenon may be inhomogeneous when viewed from a larger perspective. Ocean surface may be considered inhomogeneous because of surface roughness and variability in fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum due to waves generated by wind. In the surface layer and above, the atmosphere responds to an ensemble of surface boundary layers rather than to the individual elements that make up ecosystems such as grassland, crops or forest. A surface having patches of about 10-2 to 10-3 m contribute to atmospheric inhomogeneity in the lower boundary layer. Surfaces containing patches with diameter greater than 103 m to 104 m are capable of affecting the entire planetary boundary layer (shuttleworth, 1988).
