Articles | Volume 14, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3317-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3317-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Model evaluation paper
| 
04 Jun 2021
Model evaluation paper |
| 04 Jun 2021
| 04 Jun 2021
Evaluation of the dynamic core of the PALM model system 6.0 in a neutrally stratified urban environment: comparison between LES and wind-tunnel experiments
Tobias Gronemeier
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, Leibniz University Hannover, Hanover, Germany
Kerstin Surm
Meteorological Institute, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Frank Harms
Meteorological Institute, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Bernd Leitl
Meteorological Institute, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Björn Maronga
Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, Leibniz University Hannover, Hanover, Germany
Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Siegfried Raasch
Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, Leibniz University Hannover, Hanover, Germany
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In the future there will be very large wind farm clusters in the German Bight. This study investigates how the wind field is affected by these very large wind farms and how much energy can be extracted by the wind turbines. Very large wind farms do not only reduce the wind speed but can also cause a change in wind direction or temperature. The extractable energy per wind turbine is much smaller for large wind farms than for small wind farms due to the reduced wind speed inside the wind farms.
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Ian Boutle, Wayne Angevine, Jian-Wen Bao, Thierry Bergot, Ritthik Bhattacharya, Andreas Bott, Leo Ducongé, Richard Forbes, Tobias Goecke, Evelyn Grell, Adrian Hill, Adele L. Igel, Innocent Kudzotsa, Christine Lac, Bjorn Maronga, Sami Romakkaniemi, Juerg Schmidli, Johannes Schwenkel, Gert-Jan Steeneveld, and Benoît Vié
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Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 5435–5465, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-5435-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-5435-2021, 2021
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In this paper, we provide a technical description of a newly developed interface for coupling the PALM model system 6.0 to the weather prediction model COSMO. The interface allows users of PALM to simulate the detailed atmospheric flow for relatively small regions of tens of kilometres under specific weather conditions, for instance, periods around observation campaigns or extreme weather situations. We demonstrate the interface using a benchmark simulation.
Katrin Frieda Gehrke, Matthias Sühring, and Björn Maronga
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The analysis summarizes how sensitive the modelling of urban environment is to changes in physical parameters describing the city (e.g. reflectivity of surfaces) and to several heat island mitigation scenarios in a city quarter in Prague, Czech Republic. We used the large-eddy simulation modelling system PALM 6.0. Surface parameters connected to radiation show the highest sensitivity in this configuration. For heat island mitigation, urban vegetation is shown to be the most effective measure.
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The building model is integrated via an urban surface model into the urban climate model.
There is a strong interaction between the built environment and the urban climate.
According to the building energy concept, the energy demand results in a waste heat; this is directly transferred to the urban environment.
The impact of buildings on the urban climate is defined by different physical building parameters with different technical facilities for ventilation, heating and cooling.
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Large-eddy simulation (LES) of the urban atmospheric boundary layer involves a large separation of turbulent scales, leading to prohibitive computational costs. An online LES–LES nesting scheme is implemented into the PALM model system 6.0 to overcome this problem. Test results show that the accuracy within the high-resolution nest domains approach the non-nested high-resolution reference results. The nesting can reduce the CPU by time up to 80 % compared to the fine-resolution reference runs.
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Short summary
We demonstrate the capability of the PALM model system version 6.0 to simulate urban boundary layers. The studied situation includes a real-world building setup of the HafenCity area in Hamburg, Germany. We evaluate the simulation results against wind-tunnel measurements utilizing PALM's virtual measurement module. The comparison reveals an overall high agreement between simulation results and wind-tunnel measurements including mean wind speed and direction as well as turbulence statistics.
We demonstrate the capability of the PALM model system version 6.0 to simulate urban boundary...
