Surface Energy Balance Modeling in Urban Environments: A numerical study on the influence of thermal radiation on the urban heat island effect using a one-way coupled RANS approach

A phenomenon that compromises the health of city inhabitants is the urban heat island (UHI) effect. This effect is mainly driven by thermal radiation and designates the typically higher air temperature in cities compared to the surrounding rural areas. Over 55% of the world’s population lives in cities, and with this percentage set to rise to...

Pathway classification of Argo floats within the Irminger Sea

The Atlantic Meridonial Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in the North Atlantic Ocean (NAO) plays a major role in earth’s climate and climate change. A key element of the AMOC is deep convection, which is still not fully understood. One of the unknowns is where water is exchanged between the boundary current and the regions where deep convection...

The Effects of Varying Winter Surface Heat Loss on the Labrador Sea Water and Its Export

As the environment is changing temperatures are changing, becoming more extreme. This is expected to affect the oceans and its transport, specifically the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The Labrador Sea is a part of the AMOC, where overturning in depth and density space occurs, due to deep convection. Deep convection is the...

Assessing the impact of deforestation on observed runoff and an analysis on simulated runoff by WFLOW in the Amazon

Recent reports show that deforestation in Latin-America has been severe over the last decades. Especially Brazil is subject to an alarming rate of forest loss, which will remain a factor in the coming decades. In addition to deforestation, there is an increasing amount of hazards like floods and mudslides. These hazards result in major damage to...

Assessment of the low visibility predictions at Schiphol Airport: Performance of the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast Guidance

Airport operations are highly dependent on safe weather conditions for their daily operations. Especially the visibility conditions are crucial. Low Visibility Procedures (LVP phase M, A, B and C) are defined at Schiphol Airport, resulting in capacity and runway use restrictions. These Low Visibility Pro­cedures are based on a post­processing...

Offshore Ramps: An Analysis of their Impact on Wind Farm Power Variation and Ultimate Wind Turbine Loads: A measurement-based approach for improving ultimate design-driving loads modelling

With the growing offshore wind industry, ramp events, i.e., significant variation in wind speed (or power) within a short time period, have become of critical importance to the end-users. The analysis of wind power ramp events from the perspective of grid operators or energy traders is prevalent in the literature. Nonetheless, this area of...

Marine Cloud Brightening: On the Effects of Aerosol Injection on Marine Stratocumulus in DALES Simulations

Due to the insufficient worldwide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and related global warming, marine cloud brightening (MCB) is gaining interest as an instrument to artificially lower Earth's temperature. MCB is based on exploiting the aerosol-cloud effects to enhance the albedo of stratocumulus clouds and prolong their lifetime by...

Numerical modelling of tidal turbines in the vicinity of a weir: Application to the Eastern Scheldt barrier

Tidal energy has a large potential to contribute to achieving the sustainability goals in the Netherlands, due to the long coastline and many estuaries. The investment costs for the implementation of offshore tidal energy are however, still a drawback. A possibility to lower the investment costs for tidal energy is to implement tidal energy...

Worldwide analysis of the limiting efficiency of 2-junction solar cells

As the efficiency of silicon (Si) photovoltaic (PV) moves ever closer to the theoretical limit, 2-junction PV becomes increasingly interesting. Since PV cells are tested under standard test conditions (STC), but real world working conditions differ, it is interesting to see how 2-junction PV performs worldwide in different climates. Worldwide...

Mesoscale Modelling of Waterspouts: An Offshore Wind Energy Perspective

Wind energy is becoming an important renewable energy source. An increased number of offshore wind farms are constructed due to the relatively higher wind speeds. Besides, compared with the land, the ocean areas offer more empty space for the installation of wind turbines. In recent years, several governments in Europe have the plan to expand...

Influence of the partial closure of estuaries on the residual sediment transport and trapping

In this thesis the water motion and sediment dynamics are investigated in a periodically closed and opened estuary. The water motion in an estuary is mainly driven by the semi-diurnal tide with an period of 12h25m and river discharge. An example of such an estuary is the Ems-Dollard estuary. Recent observations show an increase in tidal range ...

Addressing the Grid size Sensitivity Issue in Large eddy Simulations of Stable Boundary Layers

In current study, several fundamental and inherent problems in original Deardorff subgrid model are identified under stably stratified condition. It is found that the mixing length parameterization in this subgrid model is at the root of a long trouble problem of grid size sensitivity in large-eddy simulation (LES). A new formulation of mixing...

Aeolian Saltation and Small-Scale Bedform Dynamics in a Large Eddy Simulation Domain

In this paper we introduce a setup to investigate aeolian saltation and surface dynamics on a centimetre spatial resolution and a sub second temporal resolution. We develop a Lagrangian saltation model and a high-resolution surface model, which we couple to each other and to a turbulence resolving large eddy simulation model. The simulated...

Towards the ambient aerosol extinction from dried aerosol in situ observations

Accurate predictions of the extinction and scattering properties of the atmosphere are important for climate research and interpreting satellite data. This study introduces a model (called the H-model) that calculates the scattering coefficients and scattering enhancement factors based on in situ measurements of the dried ambient aerosol. A...

Large-eddy simulations coupled to a spectral wave model for enhanced metocean modelling in offshore wind farms

Offshore wind energy is considered as a powerful form of renewable energy generation. It plays an important role in accelerating the world’s transition towards sustainable energy sources and reducing carbon emissions by fossil fuels. This study focuses on the advancement of service planning, related to this renewable energy source, by...

Evaporation Hysteresis over Vegetation: The Impact of Surface Processes and Boundary Layer Dynamics

The non-linear relation between Evapotranspiration (ET) and the atmospheric moisture demand in terms of vapor pressure deficit (VPD) has been widely reported. Observations point towards a diverse range of potential drivers; however, without uncovering why the identified factors are found to control diurnal ET-VPD hysteresis. Modelling efforts...