Atmosphere Ocean Science Friday Seminar

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Atmospheric Buoyancy Flux Across Scales

Speaker: Arpita Kanrar & Tea Susskind

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1314

Date: Friday, October 10, 2025, 4 p.m.

Synopsis:

Buoyancy production by moist convection creates kinetic energy in the troposphere at small scales, and is thought to contribute to the organization of convective cells in larger scales. I will discuss the use of coarse-graining methods on a convective scale model to develop a global budget for heat and energy generation as a result of vertical eddy fluxes and investigate the horizontal spatial scales of these fluxes.  The ultimate goal of this analysis is to understand the eddy flux quantities relevant to moist thermodynamic processes, in particular buoyancy, sensible heat, latent heat, and moisture. How do the upward fluxes of these different quantities relate to each other? In particular, how does the buoyancy flux contribute to the eddy kinetic energy budget? How are these upward transports split along scales, regions, and processes? How do these relationships depend on the spatial and temporal scales? The answers to these questions will clarify how these models represent the atmospheric circulation and different fluxes, and this investigation is a way of evaluating both the models and our current understanding of transport of moisture and energy in the atmosphere.