Atmospheric Process Model with Energy Dynamics Transport Network Analysis

Abstract

An energy dynamics transport network model is constructed to study the formation of weather by solar energy input in a single column of the troposphere with movement of air, and transport of heat, moisture, and momentum. The air is assumed to be compressible, moved by the wind, pressure, gravity, and solar energy input. No net vertical advection is assumed as the single air column is in equilibrium horizontally with its neighbors in thermal and mechanical energy components, momentum, and humidity transport in the coupled system. All transport processes in the single column are coupled and solved together in a new, closed-form analytical energy balance model, nested in an iterative, successive approximation method. An application example demonstrates the performance of the model against monitored weather data. Data streams are used as known inputs from a single weather station for a three-month interval. The example reveals hard-to-detect atmospheric, convective process elements for vertical heat transport necessary to satisfy energy and mass balances. One new element is introduced as a Carnot-type compression-expansion ( CE ) energy transport component, qCE , that moves about 16 percent of the average of the vertical thermal energy transport, enhanced by horizontal, but crisscrossing, wind patterns. Another new element is used to eliminate the thermal unbalance in the lower part of the tropopause by including instantaneous thermal energy storage and discharge transport components from minute to seasonal time scales. The single column network model satisfies energy balances with analytical accuracy by calibrating a Compliance index ( Ci ) to couple the deterministic CE term to the horizontal, wind-driven, repetitions of stochastic or chaotic flow crisscrosses. A realistic result for Ci affirms the acceptability of model assumptions in the example.