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Atmospheric Turbulent Characteristics Under Summer Shamal in Coastal Qatar

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journal contribution
submitted on 2024-02-01, 10:26 and posted on 2024-02-05, 10:18 authored by Yuan Li, Reza Sadr

Summer Shamal, a strong low‐level northwesterly wind in the Middle Eastern, is the major trigger for dust storm activity with a broad impact on regional transport and human safety. However, near‐ground turbulent mixing analysis under Shamal is still rare due to the lack of available high frequency data. The present study explores the near‐surface turbulence characteristics under summer Shamal, compared with those of non‐Shamal, in the coastal region of Qatar (26.08°N, 51.36°E). The results show that Shamal prevents the development of summer sea breezes in the Persian Gulf. A “Shamal day” (SD) is commonly defined as a day with a strong, continuous, north‐northwesterly wind. Compared to non‐Shamal days (NSD), SDs are characterized by higher surface sensible heat flux and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) with lower humidity, especially around noon time. At night, the wind turbulence energy is contained in smaller eddies for SD due to the more stable atmospheric conditions. The streamwise velocity spectra analysis displays a power‐law trend with a coefficient of −1.53 as compared to the traditional Kolmogorov −1.67 (−5/3) power law, indicating a higher TKE dissipation rate for SD. The smaller scatter of the normalized TKE dissipation rate observed for SD is related to lower streamwise turbulence intensity. A Weibull distribution is observed for probability distribution of TKE dissipation rate under SD in log scale for both stable and unstable conditions. This distribution for TKE dissipation rate is different than the results from other field measurements due to Shamal.

Other Information

Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2022jd037971

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

History

Language

  • English

Publisher

Wiley

Publication Year

  • 2023

License statement

This Item is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Institution affiliated with

  • Texas A&M University at Qatar

Geographic coverage

Qatar

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    Texas A&M University at Qatar

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