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Entrainment in dry and moist thermals
Stockholm University, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita).ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9299-7570
Number of Authors: 22022 (English)In: Physical Review Fluids, E-ISSN 2469-990X, Vol. 7, no 5, article id 050501Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

We study entrainment in dry thermals in neutrally and unstably stratified ambients, and moist thermals in dry-neutrally stratified ambients using direct numerical simulations. We find, in agreement with results of Lecoanet and Jeevanjee [J. Atmos. Sci. 76, 3785 (2019)], that turbulence plays a minor role in entrainment in dry thermals in a neutral ambient for Reynolds numbers Re≲104. We then show that the net entrainment rate increases when the buoyancy of the thermals increases, either by condensation heating or because of an unstably stratified ambient. This is in contrast with the findings of Morrison et al. [J. Atmos. Sci. 78, 797 (2021)]. We also show that the role of turbulence is greater in these cases than in dry thermals and, significantly, that the combined action of condensation heating and turbulence creates intense small-scale vorticity, destroying the coherent vortex ring that is seen in dry and moist laminar thermals. These findings suggest that fully resolved simulations at Reynolds numbers significantly larger than the mixing transition Reynolds number Re=104 are necessary to understand the role of turbulence in the entrainment in growing cumulus clouds, which consist of a series of thermals rising and decaying in succession.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 7, no 5, article id 050501
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Fluid Mechanics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-206838DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.050501ISI: 000800619400004Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85130544279OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-206838DiVA, id: diva2:1685484
Available from: 2022-08-03 Created: 2022-08-03 Last updated: 2025-02-09Bibliographically approved

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Ravichandran, Sivaramakrishnan

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