UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Relative Efficiencies of Turbulent Transfer of Heat, Mass, and Momentum over a Patchy Urban Surface. Roth, M.; Oke, Timothy R.

Abstract

This study uses observational data from a suburban site in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to investigate the relative facility with which heat, water vapor, and momentum are transported by turbulence in the unstable surface layer. The ratios of linear correlation coefficients −rwT/ruw and −rwq/ruw increase approximately linearly with instability and are generally smaller than typical rural values due to bluff-body effects. The ratio rwT/rwq is greatest near neutral and larger than unity at all stabilities. This inequality may be caused by the complex source/sink patterns of the urban surface, cloud effects on the radiative forcing, and the unusually well-developed interaction between the surface and the upper portions of the urban boundary layer. Inequality of transfer between T and q will make it difficult to measure turbulent fluxes for cities using standard gradient approaches. Copyright 1995 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.

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