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Effective buoyancy at the surface and aloft
Author(s) -
Jeevanjee Nadir,
Romps David M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.2683
Subject(s) - buoyancy , hydrostatic equilibrium , mechanics , neutral buoyancy , meteorology , geology , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , physics , quantum mechanics
It is shown here that a wide, buoyant parcel of air at the surface accelerates far less rapidly than it does aloft. In particular, analytical formulae are derived for the effective buoyancy (i.e. the net vertical acceleration due to parcel buoyancy and environmental response) of idealized cylinders of diameter D and height H , located in free space and at the surface. These formulae quantify the decrease of effective buoyancy with increasing aspect ratio D / H , and show that this effect is more pronounced for surface cylinders, especially when D / H > 1. We gain intuition for these results by considering the pressure fields generated by these buoyant parcels, and we test our results with large‐eddy simulations. Our formulae can inform parametrizations of the vertical velocity equation for clouds, and also provide a quantitative map of the ‘grey zone’ in numerical modelling between hydrostatic and non‐hydrostatic regimes.