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Fog Formation Related to Gravity Currents Interacting with Coastal Topography
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2021
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Source: Boundary-Layer Meteorol 181, 499-521
[PDF-1.83 MB]
Details:
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Journal Title:Boundary-Layer Meteorolgy
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NOAA Program & Office:
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Description:An interesting mixing-fog event was identified during the C-FOG field campaign, where a cold-frontal airmass arriving from the north-east collided with The Downs peninsula in Ferryland, Newfoundland, Canada, to produce misty/foggy conditions. A comprehensive set of field observations suggests that this collision caused turbulent mixing of nearly saturated ambient air with an almost saturated cold-frontal airmass, creating conditions for mixing fog. To delve into the physical processes underlying this phenomenon, laboratory experiments were performed on the interaction of lock-exchange-induced gravity currents with a rectangular obstacle. Instantaneous velocity and density fields were obtained using particle image velocimetry and planar laser-induced fluorescence. The observations suggest that the obstacle starts affecting the approaching gravity-current propagation at an upstream distance of 2H and, upon collision, the mixing occurs over a length of 0.83H, where H is the depth of the ambient fluid layer. The time for larger-scale turbulent stirring to permeate to the smallest scales of turbulence and activate the condensation nuclei is estimated as 3t∗, where t∗=H/g′−−−−√ is the intrinsic time scale of the gravity current, and g′ is the reduced gravity. Extrapolation of laboratory results to field conditions shows a good agreement with observations.
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Source:Boundary-Layer Meteorol 181, 499-521
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Rights Information:Accepted Manuscript
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Compliance:Submitted
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