Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/M009440/1
Testing theories of baroclinic adjustment in the laboratory and in simple atmospheric models
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Professor PL Read, University of Oxford, Oxford Physics
- Grant held at:
- University of Oxford, Oxford Physics
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Marine
- Overall Classification:
- Atmospheric
- ENRIs:
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Large Scale Dynamics/Transport
- Radiative Processes & Effects
- Climate & Climate Change
- Convection
- Continuum Mechanics
- Planetary Atmospheres
- Abstract:
- The state of the Earth's climate can be viewed as resulting from a delicate balance between radiative forcing processes and the dynamical response of the system as it seeks to transport heat across the planet. Recent research has tended to focus on quantifying the radiative forcing processes and their associated uncertainties, and various factors (including those human-induced) leading to changes in the climate. But radiative forcing primarily constrains the energy throughput of the climate system and only indirectly influences key climate variables such as the mean surface temperature or the vertical lapse rate. Climate variables are also strongly affected by how efficiently heat is redistributed across the planet by dynamical processes in the atmosphere and oceans. These are intrinsically nonlinear, and are affected by internal feedbacks that are still not well understood. In particular, there is still no widely accepted theory to account for the mean temperature difference between the tropics and polar regions, or the lapse rate in mid-latitudes, for a given set of radiative forcings. In this project, therefore, we will study some of the most relevant dynamical processes in numerical model simulations, based on the Met Office ENDGame Unified Model system that is currently being used and continually developed for both weather prediction and climate modelling. The ENDGame model will be used here, (a) in a configuration representing a novel laboratory analogue of the mid-latitude climate system under carefully controlled conditions (currently being investigated experimentally in Oxford under an EPSRC research grant), and (b) as a simplified global atmospheric model subject to idealized radiative and boundary forcing. The use of a well controlled laboratory analogue as one of the elements of the proposed programme is a particularly novel aspect of this work and opens up the possibility of exploring and validating the performance of the ENDGame numerical model in a quantitatively rigorous way that strongly complements other, more conventional tests. The resulting model for comparison with the laboratory measurements will thus employ exactly the same numerical schemes as for the full atmospheric model used for numerical weather prediction and climate modelling. During the project, the student will work with Met Office staff to adapt and implement this version of the model. The student will then carry out a series of simulations that are intended directly to simulate cases for which experimental measurements of flow velocities and temperatures are available. As well as providing insights into the flows themselves that complement the experimental measurements, this will provide test cases against which different model configurations, resolutions, convective parameterizations etc. can be quantitatively tested. The outcome of these comparisons will then be used to inform the design of a series of model simulations of global atmospheric circulations, also using ENDGame over a range of resolutions, to investigate some of the feedbacks and processes that determine the distribution of temperature under conditions appropriate to an Earth-like planetary atmosphere.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/M009440/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £85,122
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - RTSG | Total - Student Stipend |
|---|---|---|
| £16,584 | £11,000 | £57,536 |
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