TPChange Project B06
The collaborative research project “Tropopause region in a Changing Atmosphere” (TPChange) addresses the complexity of the upper-troposphere lower-stratosphere (UTLS) region through a combination of field measurements, laboratory studies, theoretical approaches and multi-scale numerical modeling. For further information, see: https://tpchange.de/.
Our research group is involved in the Research Area B, in the sub areas B03 and B06. The project B06 aims to understand how gravity waves (GWs), instabilities and turbulence in the UTLS affect troposphere-stratosphere exchange and the structure of the UTLS region. The transport of various tracers in the UTLS region is affected by the mixing induced by turbulence. Our initial focus within B06 is on turbulence generated by breaking mountain waves.
The ultimate objective of the B06 project is to accurately represent the GW-induced mixing and turbulence parameterisations in the ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic (ICON) model. Towards this end, the current operational turbulence scheme in ICON is compared against the new scheme developed by our group, the 2TKE+APDF scheme (Ďurán et.al., 2022), to evaluate their performance in the UTLS region and suggest possible improvements. The parameterization developments will be informed by the study of turbulence characteristics in the UTLS region using large-eddy simulation (LES).
References
- Bašták Ďurán, I., Sakradzija, M., Schmidli, J., 2022. The Two‐Energies Turbulence Scheme Coupled to the Assumed PDF Method. J Adv Model Earth Syst 14. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002922