Identification

Title

A Large-Eddy Simulation Study of Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide Isotopes in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Abstract

A large-eddy simulation model developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is extended to simulate the transport and diffusion of C¹⁸OO, H₂¹⁸O and ¹³CO₂ in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The simulation results show that the ¹⁸O compositions of leaf water and the ABL CO₂ are moderately sensitive to wind speed. The variations in the ¹⁸O composition of water vapour are an order of magnitude greater than those in the ¹³C and ¹⁸O compositions of CO₂ both at turbulent eddy scales and across the capping inversion. In a fully-developed convective ABL, these isotopic compositions are well mixed as with other conserved atmospheric quantities. The Keeling intercepts determined with the simulated high-frequency turbulence time series do not give a reliable estimate of the ¹⁸O composition of the surface water vapour flux and may be a reasonable approximation to the ¹³C and ¹⁸O compositions of the surface CO₂ flux in the late afternoon only after a deep convective ABL has developed. We suggest that our isotopic large-eddy simulation (ISOLES) model should be a useful tool for testing and formulating research hypotheses on land–air isotopic exchanges.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7hh6kt1

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-10-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact