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The Environmental Fluid Dynamics
Lecture Series Presents a Seminar
Dr. Silvana DiSabatino University of Salento, Dept. of Physics
Visiting Professor, Notre Dame University
Tuessday, Sept. 17, 2013
11:00 a.m.
Rock Lab, 154 Fitzpatrick Hall
Refreshments to follow
The Materhorn Project
Abstract2
MATERHORN-X Field Experiments: initial results
Two extensive field campaigns were recently conducted at US-Army Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, US, as part of the MATERHORN (www.nd.edu/~dynamics/materhorn) project. While the fall campaign focused on thermally-driven circulation, the spring campaign was devoted to explore flow and mountain interactions under strong synoptic forcing. The experiments, of the duration of one-month each, were realized using several instrumentation for both in-situ and aerial measurements. Given the rich variety of cutting-edge technology and instrumentation employed and the considerable amount of data collected, these experiments can be regarded as the most comprehensive investigations ever done in mountain meteorology. This presentation is devoted to illustrate the research ideas behind those experiments and the rationale for field deployment. Some initial results are also presented with special emphasis on evening transitional events. Two scenarios are discussed: one for which the transition occurs as a slow moving front (as originally proposed by Hunt et al. 2003) with associated high turbulence, and a scenario in which the transition occurs over the entire air column as a slab flow with weak turbulence. For the latter a criterion based on the Rayleigh number is verified using the available dataset.
MATERHORN-X Field Experiments: initial resultsTwo extensive field campaigns were recently conducted at US-Army Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, US, as part of the MATERHORN (www.nd.edu/~dynamics/materhorn) project. While the fall campaign focused on thermally-driven circulation, the spring campaign was devoted to explore flow and mountain interactions under strong synoptic forcing. The experiments, of the duration of one-month each, were realized using several instrumentation for both in-situ and aerial measurements. Given the rich variety of cutting-edge technology and instrumentation employed and the considerable amount of data collected, these experiments can be regarded as the most comprehensive investigations ever done in mountain meteorology. This presentation is devoted to illustrate the research ideas behind those experiments and the rationale for field deployment. Some initial results are also presented with special emphasis on evening transitional events. Two scenarios are discussed: one for which the transition occurs as a slow moving front (as originally proposed by Hunt et al. 2003) with associated high turbulence and a scenario in which the transition occurs over the entire air column as a slab flow with weak turbulence. For the latter a criterion based on the Rayleigh number is verified using the available dataset.