Meteorology 5344, CFD, Fall 2003

Term Project Assignment

Dr. M. Xue

 

Purpose To foster the development of investigative skills, critical thinking, and the communication of scientific results, making use of knowledge and skills acquired in the course.

 

Basis   The project will entail an investigation of some aspect of computational fluid dynamics using the Advanced Regional Prediction System (http://www.caps.ou.edu/ARPS) or a similar model. The ARPS is a general purpose nonhydrostatic weather prediction model developed at CAPS. It should make use of recent scientific literature and emphasize CFD in a meteorological or related context. You write a report in the form of a short paper (The format of American Meteorological Society's Journals or the format of a prominent journal of your field should be followed. Author instructions for AMS journals can be found at http://www.ametsoc.org/pubs/arcjrnls.html), and given a 15 minutes presentation on your results.

 

Topics  You are free to choose any topic you wish, though I must approve it before you begin work. A number of possibilities are listed below ‑ please feel free to explore other topics as you desire, including those in other disciplines (e.g., hydrology, basic fluid mechanics). Your topic can be related to your thesis research but should not be taken directly from it. Original research is encouraged.

 

•     Time integration schemes for compressible models

•     Positive definite / monotonic /high-order advection for scalars

•     Semi-Lagrangian advection for scalars

•     Effects of computational mixing / diffusion

•     Bahaviors of lateral boundary conditions

•     Radiation top boundary conditions

•     Impacts of spatial resolution

•     Frontal dynamics

•     Baroclinic wave dynamics

•     Convective and mesoscale storm dynamics

•     Squall line dynamics

•     Parallel plate convection

•     3D thermal convection

•     Land, lake and sea breeze dynamics

•     Density currents, cold pool boundaries

•     Mesoscale cellular convection

•     Gravity wave dynamics and critical layers

•     Intense vortices

•     Terrain‑forced flows, mountain waves, severe downslope winds

•     Orographic convection

•     Dryline simulation

•     Impacts of land surface characteristics

•     Impacts of microphysical processes on cloud morphology

•     Impact of cumulus parameterization on quantitative precipitation

•     Impact of other physical processes on model forecast

Actual topics chosen by past students vary greatly. The following are a few examples:

 

A numerical study of surface friction on density currents

Elementary storm electricity in the ARPS

A study of the sensitivity of a dryline simulation to variations in surface characteristics

Simulation of a turbulent thermal with varying resolution and turbulence models.

 

You get the idea.

 

BTW, given the relative short length of time you have to complete the project, you should be careful in choosing your topic.

 

Timeline

 

Sept. 19 – Oct 13 Explore topics, review literature, and discuss ideas with me. Begin learning the ARPS by running simple experiments. I will arrange a short tutorial session on using APRS.

 

Oct 13             1‑page proposal due. This proposal should the topic you have chosen, the problems and/or questions you want to address, the numerical experiments that you want perform, and anticipated results.

 

By Oct 15        Proposal approved by me

 

Oct 15 - Nov 24          Conduct Experiments, analyze results and prepare report.

 

Nov 24            Report due. Length is restricted to 15 double‑spaced pages which include at most 5 pages of figures and an abstract. The bibliography will be counted separately. Neatness is a must!

 

Dec 3, 5, 8       Presentations by students

 

Dec 10             Review for third exam

Dec 12             Third exam

 

The following factors will be considered when judging the quality of the paper/report:

 

1. Overall ‑ Is the paper clearly written and does it employ correct grammatical structures? Is the paper well‑organized, with each paragraph containing only one principal thought that leads logically to the next?

 

2. Introduction/Motivation ‑ Has the author motivated the reader by providing relevant background information and a clear indication of the project's goals and relevance?

 

3. Main body of report ‑ Does the report clearly describe the methodology of the experiments, the principal findings, and any relationships between this study and others? Are the figures appropriate and clearly explained? Are the techniques used appropriate for the problem at hand? Do errors in logic exist? Are the explanations vague or ambiguous?

 

4. Summary/Conclusions ‑ Are the results summarized in a coherent manner and tied together? Do the conclusions follow from the discussion and are they justified?

 

Your grade for this project is based upon:

 

Quality of your report (50%) and clarity of presentation (50%). Overall, the project accounts for 25% of the total grade.

 

Sooner will be your main computational platform. For smaller jobs, you can also use SOM Metlab Linux workstations (there are 25 of them and they are free of computational jobs most of the time. You use the Rossby account to login). The tar file of the source code of the latest version of ARPS is /home/mxue/cfd2003/arps5.0.0IHOP_6.tar.gz on Sooner), which was used in your 1st homework (so you already know how to compiler and run ARPS!)  Other supporting data, such as terrain data, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.caps.ou.edu/pub/ARPS/ARPS.data. Documentations of ARPS can be found at http://www.caps.ou.edu/ARPS/arpsdoc.html. Two ARPS description papers (Xue et al 2000, 2001) linked at the page are particularly useful, so is a third one found at the same page (Xue et al 2003).