Treatment of LBCs in 2D Simulation of Convection over Hills

Abstract: A series of idealized model simulations are analyzed to determine the sensitivity of model results to different configurations of the lateral boundary conditions (LBCs) in simulating mesoscale shallow convection over hilly terrain. In the simulations with steady thermal forcing at the model surface, a radiation condition at both boundaries is the best choice under high wind conditions, and the best results are produced when both the normal velocities and the temperature are treated with the radiation scheme in which the phase speed is the same for different variables. When the background wind speed is reasonably small, the LBC configuration with either the radiation or the zero gradient condition at both boundaries tends to make the numerical solution unstable. The choice of a constant condition at the inflow boundary and a radiation outflow boundary condition is appropriate in most cases. In the simulations with diurnal thermal forcing at the model surface, different LBC schemes are combined together to reduce spurious signals induced by the outflow boundary. A specification inflow boundary condition, in which the velocity fields at the inflow boundary are provided using the time-dependent results of a simulation with periodic LBCs over a flat domain, is tested and the results indicate that the specification condition at the inflow boundary makes it possible to use a smaller model domain to obtain reasonable results. The model horizontal domain length should be greater than a critical length, which depends on the domain depth H and the angle between gravity wave phase lines and the vertical. An estimate of minimum domain length is given by [(H - zi)/πU]√N2L2x - 4π2U2 , where N and U are the background stability and wind speed,respectively, Lx is the typical gravity wavelength scale, and zi is the convective boundary layer (CBL) depth.

Keywords:
• lateral boundary condition,
• numerical simulation,
• convection,
• orography