Turbulence in the Atmosphere

Based on his over forty years of research and teaching, John C. Wyngaard's textbook is an excellent up-to-date introduction to turbulence in the atmosphere and in engineering flows for advanced students, and a reference work for researchers in the atmospheric sciences. Part I introduces the concepts and equations of turbulence. It includes a rigorous introduction to the principal types of numerical modeling of turbulent flows. Part II describes turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. Part III covers the foundations of the statistical representation of turbulence and includes illustrative examples of stochastic problems that can be solved analytically. The book treats atmospheric and engineering turbulence in a unified way, gives clear explanation of the fundamental concepts of modeling turbulence, and has an up-to-date treatment of turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. Student exercises are included at the ends of chapters, and worked solutions are available online for use by course instructors.

Preface; Part I. A Grammar of Turbulence: 1. Introduction; 2. Getting to know turbulence; 3. Equations for averaged variables; 4. Turbulent fluxes; 5. Conservation equations for covariances; 6. Large-eddy dynamics, the energy cascade, and large-eddy simulation; 7. Kolmogrov scaling, its extensions, and two-dimensional turbulence; Part II. Turbulence in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer: 8. The equations of atmospheric turbulence; 9. The atmospheric boundary layer; 10. The atmospheric surface layer; 11. The convective boundary layer; 12. The stable boundary layer; Part III. Statistical Representation of Turbulence: 13. Probability densities and distributions; 14. Isotropic tensors; 15. Covariances, autocorrelations, and spectra; 16. Statistics in turbulence analysis; Index.

John C. Wyngaard's experience in turbulence research and teaching spans the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, the Wave Propagation Laboratory of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, the Atmospheric Analysis and Prediction Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the Department of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, where he developed a sequence of courses on turbulence. This book is based on those courses. He has published over 100 refereed journal papers covering theoretical, observational, and numerical modeling aspects of engineering and geophysical turbulence.