Scale interactions and anisotropy in stable boundary layers

Abstract

Regimes of interactions between motions on different time-scales are investigated in the FLOSSII dataset for nocturnal near-surface stable boundary layer (SBL) turbulence. The nonstationary response of turbulent vertical velocity variance to non-turbulent, sub-mesoscale wind velocity variability is analysed using the bounded variation, finite element, vector autoregressive factor models (FEM-BV-VARX) clustering method. Several locally stationary flow regimes are identified with different influences of sub-meso wind velocity on the turbulent vertical velocity variance. In each flow regime, we analyse multiple scale interactions and quantify the amount of turbulent variability which can be statistically explained by the individual forcing variables. The state of anisotropy of the Reynolds stress tensor in the different flow regimes is shown to relate to these different signatures of scale interactions. In flow regimes dominated by sub-mesoscale wind variability, the Reynolds stresses show a clear preference for strongly anisotropic, one-component stresses, which tend to correspond to periods in which the turbulent fluxes are against the mean gradient. These periods additionally show stronger persistence in their dynamics, compared to periods of more isotropic stresses. The analyses give insights on how the different topologies relate to non-stationary turbulence triggering by sub-mesoscale motions.