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5.b. Treatment of convection in a GCM

Our simulation results suggest that GCMs could simulate dust injection into the atmosphere from a dust-free initial condition if a small-scale wind fluctuation associated with the km-size convection would be properly incorporated. Current GCMs for the Martian atmosphere employ the convective adjustment schemle to represent the effects of unresolvable thermal convection. The convective adjustment scheme adjusts convectivly unstable temperature gradient to the neutral one as the result of convective heat transport; The convective adjustment scheme and any other parameterization schemes do not represent wind fluctuations associated with the km-size convection and its contribution to the surface stress are available.

Since the knowledge on the structures of vertical convection in the Marian atmosphere has been quite limited, we have had almost no choice other than adopting the convective adjust scheme for Martian atmospheric GCMs. The phenomenon in the Earth's atmosphere that corresponds to the km-size convection in the Martian atmosphere which is a dominant process of thermal transport from the ground surface to the entire troposphere is cumulus convection, As for terrestrial GCMs, various kinds of cumulus convective parameterization schemes have been developed in order to have a proper representation of cumulus convection. The simplest one among them is the convective adjustment, and more complex ones incorporate distribution of vertical size of cumulus, entrainment into cumulus, and so on. (e.g., Arakawa and Schubert, 1974). The reason why the development of cumulus convective parameterization has been possible is that we have been accumulating real images of cumulus convection to a certain extent through both of observations and theories. However, what has been emphasized in those cumulus parameterizations is not wind fluctuation but vertical thermal transport. A convective parameterization scheme which incorporates fluctuations of wind has not been considered in the development of terrestrial GCMs.

The present study reveals several features of vertical convection in the Martian atmosphere; that is the km-size conveticon. Ground surface stress in GCMs is calculated from the intensity of winds explicitly represented in the model parameterized by the formulation called the bulk formula. In the numerical model used in the present study ground surface stress is also calculated by the bulk formula. Nevertheless, the magnitude of ground surface stress calculated in this study is larger than those of GCMs. This is caused by the explicit calculation of the km-size convection.

As is observed in Figure 5, Figure 6, the horizontal mean value of ground surface stress calculated in the present study is also not very large. However, the local values of ground surface stress can be much larger than the horizontal mean value because of the large amount of wind fluctuation associated with the km-size convection. The ground surface stress represented in the parameterizations of GCMs, where the contribution of subgrid scale turbulence including km-size convection might be incorporated, is the value representing an average over a wide horizontal area of the scale of the GCM grid size. Those values correspond to the horizontal mean stress obtained in the present study, and consequently should be smaller than the maximum values appearing locally.

Based on the features of the km-size convection revealed by the present numerical study, we can develop a new convective parameterization scheme which can estimate wind fluctuation and maximum value of ground surface stress associated with the convection. The brief idea is to evaluate convective kinetic energy added on to the convective adjustment scheme. By the use of potential temperature fluctuation and the depth of convecitve layer , convective kinetic energy is evaluated roughly in the form like (1). Assuming the valude of turbulent diffusion coefficient near the surface, for instance, given by the value of the lowest level of the GCM or given simply as $K$ = 15 m2sec-1, from the discussed in Section 3.d., can be evaluated by the heat flux obtained from the output of GCM. The magnitude of wind fluctuation associated with the km-size convection can be estimated by those values. If the magnitude of wind fluctuations estimated in those manners is incorporated into the calculation of surface stress in Surface flux parameterization, we expect dust can be spontaneously ejected from the surface of GCM simulations.


A numerical simulation of thermal convection in the Martian lower atmosphere.
Odaka, Nakajima, Ishiwatari, Hayashi,   Nagare Multimedia 2001
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