Ekman1D

Variable eddy viscosity Ekman layer in the ABL (1D)

Summary

Matlab implementation of the solution of the Ekman equations in the atmospheric boundary layer. The flow is assumed to be horizontal and homogeneous, but a height dependent turbulent viscosity can be modelled. The solutions are provided in one dimension.

Contents

The submission contains

• The function EkmanAnalytic, which provides an analytical solution to Ekman's equations for a constant eddy viscosity in the atmospheric boundary layer.
• The solveEkman function, which numerically solves Ekman's equations using an explicit finite difference scheme and allows the use of height-dependent eddy viscosity. The numerical implementation is partly inspired by [1].
• The function solveEkman_bcp4v.m, which uses the Matlab function bcp4v to solve Ekman's equations.
• The function scm_bcp4v.m, which is used for more advanced single column models.
• An example file Example0.mlx which reproduces some of the figures shown in ref [2].
• An example file documentation_part2.mlx.mlx which uses the scm_bcp4v function.

Any questions, suggestions or comments are welcome.

References:

[1] Berger, B. W., & Grisogono, B. (1998). The baroclinic, variable eddy viscosity Ekman layer. Boundary-layer meteorology, 87(3), 363-380.

[2] https://www.whoi.edu/science/PO/people/jprice/website/education_scripts.html