Department of Earth Sciences

Maintenance turbulence in stratified conditions is key to accurately forecast the atmospheric state in the planetary boundary layer, and it has manifold implications on agriculture, road and aviation safety as well as air quality. While the turbulent state is well-described, the transitioning regime remains puzzling to date. Past decades have seen sophisticated stability, but a simpler perspective on the problem was already taken by H. Schlichting in 1935: Turbulenz bei Wärmeschichtung ( ZAMM Zeitschrift f. angew. Math. und Mech. Vol. 15: p. 313-339, cf. ‘First read’ below). Back then, Schlichting relied on graphical methods to solve for the transition parameters. A reassessment of his approach using a numerical approach to the turbulence-transition problem may shed light on the parts of the parameter space he could not assess back
then.

First read: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/zamm.19350150602

Supplementary information: The candidate will work on mathematical problems and their geophysical interpretation following the above paper by Schlichting. [For Msc: Large amounts of data from a turbulence-resolving model will be analyzed requiring experience in Python or FORTRAN.]