The Netherlands is characterized by highly variable land use within a small area, and a strong influence of the North Sea on national climate. Devoid of significant topography, it is an excellent location for assessing the relative influence of various factors on fog occurrence in the absence of terrain effects. Using observations from a dense network of weather stations throughout the country, the climatology of fog in the Netherlands is assessed over a period of 45 years. On a national scale, interannual variability is linked to changes in synoptic pressure-gradient forcing. Within the country, a comprehensive in-depth analysis of regional differences between fog occurrence is made, together with an assessment of local physical factors which could bias fog formation in one location over another. Regional variability is shown to be strongly related to the mesoscale influences of urbanization and the North Sea. In fact, some locations experience over twice as much fog as others. From this finding, a simple index is presented, which combines the water and urban fraction surrounding a station. This “Regionally Weighted Index” (RWI) is able to accurately sort the stations according to their relative fogginess. Its practical use is encouraged for assessing a given site's climatological favourability, even when in situ meteorological observations are unavailable.

We present a conceptual model for the diurnal cycle of the dry atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). It may serve as a framework for future numerical studies on the transitional dynamics that characterize the ABL over land. The conceptual model enables us to define expressions for relevant physical scales as a function of the most prominent forcing parameters and the low degree of complexity facilitates a dimensionless description. This is useful to help generalize boundary layer dynamics that occur on a diurnal time scale. Further, the model’s application for numerical studies is illustrated herein with two examples: a single-column-model study that assesses the effect of wind forcing on the main characteristics of the diurnal cycle, and a large-eddy-simulation study on the daily evolution of turbulence under weak-wind-forcing conditions. The results from these studies sketch the general evolution of the present set of diurnal-cycle systems in more detail. We discuss how the setups are able to reproduce well-known dynamical features of the ABL and also highlight limitations, where the simple conceptual system is unable to describe realistic ABL behavior. We conclude that the present conceptual model has an interesting balance between model-system complexity and physical realism, such that it is useful for future idealized studies on the diurnal cycle of the ABL.

In this work we study the dynamics of the surface-based temperature inversion over the Antarctic Plateau during the polar winter. Using 6 years of observations from the French–Italian Antarctic station Concordia at Dome C, we investigate sudden regime transitions in the strength of the near-surface temperature inversion. Here we define “near-surface” as being within the domain of the 45-m measuring tower. In particular, we consider the strongly nonlinear relation between the 10-m inversion strength (T _10m – T _s ) and the 10-m wind speed. To this end, all individual events for which the 10-m inversion strength increases or decreases continuously by more than 15 K in time are considered. Composite time series and vertical profiles of wind and temperature reveal specific characteristics of the transition from weak to very strong inversions and vice versa. In contrast to midlatitudes, the largest variations in temperature are not found at the surface but at a height of 10 m. A similar analysis was performed on results from an atmospheric single-column model (SCM). Overall, the SCM results reproduce the observed characteristics of the transitions in the near-surface inversion remarkably well. Using model output, the underlying mechanisms of the regime transitions are identified. The nonlinear relation between inversion strength and wind speed at a given level is explained by variations in the geostrophic wind speed, changes in the depth of the turbulent layer and the vertical divergence of turbulent fluxes. Moreover, the transitions between different boundary layer regimes cannot be explained without considering the contribution of subsidence heating.

We present an extension of the dynamic global vegetation model, Lund-Potsdam-Jena Managed Land (LPJmL), to simulate planted forests intended for carbon (C) sequestration. We implemented three functional types to simulate plantation trees in temperate, tropical, and boreal climates. The parameters of these functional types were optimized to fit target growth curves (TGCs). These curves represent the evolution of stemwood C over time in typical productive plantations and were derived by combining field observations and LPJmL estimates for equivalent natural forests. While the calibrated model underestimates stemwood C growth rates compared to the TGCs, it represents substantial improvement over using natural forests to represent afforestation. Based on a simulation experiment in which we compared global natural forest versus global forest plantation, we found that forest plantations allow for much larger C uptake rates on the timescale of 100 years, with a maximum difference of a factor of 1.9, around 54 years. In subsequent simulations for an ambitious but realistic scenario in which 650Mha (14% of global managed land, 4.5% of global land surface) are converted to forest over 85 years, we found that natural forests take up 37PgC versus 48PgC for forest plantations. Comparing these results to estimations of C sequestration required to achieve the 2°C climate target, we conclude that afforestation can offer a substantial contribution to climate mitigation. Full evaluation of afforestation as a climate change mitigation strategy requires an integrated assessment which considers all relevant aspects, including costs, biodiversity, and trade-offs with other land-use types. Our extended version of LPJmL can contribute to such an assessment by providing improved estimates of C uptake rates by forest plantations.

The reduction in visibility that accompanies fog events presents a hazard to human safety and navigation. However, accurate fog prediction remains elusive, with numerical methods often unable to capture the conditions of fog formation, and observational methods having high false-alarm rates in order to obtain high hit rates of prediction. In this work, 5 years of observations from the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research are used to further investigate how false alarms may be reduced using the statistical method for diagnosing radiation-fog events from observations developed by Menut et al. (Boundary-Layer Meteorol 150:277–297, 2014). The method is assessed for forecast lead times of 1–6 h and implementing four optimization schemes to tune the prediction for different needs, compromising between confidence and risk. Prediction scores improve significantly with decreased lead time, with the possibility of achieving a hit rate of over 90% and a false-alarm rate of just 13%. In total, a further 31 combinations of predictive variables beyond the original combination are explored (including mostly, e.g., variables related to moisture and static stability of the boundary layer). Little change to the prediction scores indicates any appropriate combination of variables that measure saturation, turbulence, and near-surface cooling can be used. The remaining false-alarm periods are manually assessed, identifying the lack of spatio–temporal information (such as the temporal evolution of the local conditions and the advective history of the airmass) as the ultimate limiting factor in the methodology’s predictive capabilities. Future observational studies are recommended that investigate the near-surface evolution of fog and the role of non-local heterogeneity on fog formation.

This study aims to find the typical growth rate of the temperature inversion during the onset of the stable boundary layer around sunset.The sunset transition is a very challenging period for numerical weather prediction, since neither accepted theories for the convective boundary layer nor those for the stable boundary layer appear to be applicable. To gainmore insight in this period, a systematic investigation of the temperature inversion growth rate is conducted. A statistical procedure is used to analyze almost 16 years of observations from the Cabauw observational tower, supported by observations from two additional sites (DomeCandKarlsruhe). The results show that, on average, the growth rate of the temperature inversion (normalized by the maximum inversion during the night) weakly declines with increasing wind speed. The observed growth rate is quantitatively consistent among the sites, and it appears insensitive to various other parameters. The results were also insensitive to the afternoon decay rate of the net radiation except when this decay rate was very weak. These observations are compared to numerical solutions of three models with increasing complexity: a bulk model, an idealized single-column model (SCM), and an operational-level SCM. It appears only the latter could reproduce qualitative features of the observations using a first-order closure. Moreover, replacing this closure with a prognostic TKE scheme substantially improved the quantitative performance. This suggests that idealized models assuming instantaneous equilibrium flux-profile relations may not aid in understanding this period, since history effects may qualitatively affect the dynamics.

The performance of an atmospheric single-column model (SCM) is studied systematically for stably-stratified conditions. To this end, 11 years (2005–2015) of daily SCM simulations were compared to observations from the Cabauw observatory, The Netherlands. Each individual clear-sky night was classified in terms of the ambient geostrophic wind speed with a (Formula presented.) bin-width. Nights with overcast conditions were filtered out by selecting only those nights with an average net radiation of less than (Formula presented.). A similar procedure was applied to the observational dataset. A comparison of observed and modelled ensemble-averaged profiles of wind speed and potential temperature and time series of turbulent fluxes showed that the model represents the dynamics of the nocturnal boundary layer (NBL) at Cabauw very well for a broad range of mechanical forcing conditions. No obvious difference in model performance was found between near-neutral and strongly-stratified conditions. Furthermore, observed NBL regime transitions are represented in a natural way. The reference model version performs much better than a model version that applies excessive vertical mixing as is done in several (global) operational models. Model sensitivity runs showed that for weak-wind conditions the inversion strength depends much more on details of the land-atmosphere coupling than on the turbulent mixing. The presented results indicate that in principle the physical parametrizations of large-scale atmospheric models are sufficiently equipped for modelling stably-stratified conditions for a wide range of forcing conditions.

Geostrophic wind speed data, derived from pressure observations, are used in combination with tower measurements to investigate the nocturnal stable boundary layer at Cabauw, the Netherlands. Since the geostrophic wind speed is not directly influenced by local nocturnal stability, it may be regarded as an external forcing parameter of the nocturnal stable boundary layer. This is in contrast to local parameters such as in situ wind speed, the Monin-Obukhov stability parameter (z/L), or the local Richardson number. To characterize the stable boundary layer, ensemble averages of clear-sky nights with similar geostrophic wind speeds are formed. In this manner, the mean dynamical behavior of near-surface turbulent characteristics and composite profiles of wind and temperature are systematically investigated. The classification is found to result in a gradual ordering of the diagnosed variables in terms of the geostrophic wind speed. In an ensemble sense the transition from the weakly stable to very stable boundary layer is more gradual than expected. Interestingly, for very weak geostrophic winds, turbulent activity is found to be negligibly small while the resulting boundary cooling stays finite. Realistic numerical simulations for those cases should therefore have a comprehensive description of other thermodynamic processes such as soil heat conduction and radiative transfer.

Investigation of meteorological measurements along a 45 m tower at Dome C on the high East Antarctic Plateau revealed two distinct stable boundary layer (SBL) regimes at this location. The first regime is characterized by strong winds and continuous turbulence. It results in full vertical coupling of temperature, wind magnitude and wind direction in the SBL. The second regime is characterized by weak winds, associated with weak turbulent activity and very strong temperature inversions reaching up to 25 K in the lowest 10 m. Vertical temperature profiles are generally exponentially shaped (convex) in the first regime and ‘convex–concave–convex’ in the second. The transition between the two regimes is particularly abrupt when looking at the near-surface temperature inversion and it can be identified by a 10 m wind-speed threshold. With winds under this threshold, the turbulent heat supply toward the surface becomes significantly lower than the net surface radiative cooling. The threshold value (including its range of uncertainty) appears to agree with recent theoretical predictions from the so-called ‘minimum wind speed for sustainable turbulence’ (MWST) theory. For the quasi-steady, clear-sky winter cases, the relation between the near-surface inversion amplitude and the wind speed takes a characteristic ‘S’ shape. Closer analysis suggests that this relation corresponds to a ‘critical transition’ between a steady turbulent and a steady ‘radiative’ regime, with a dynamically unstable branch in the transition zone. These fascinating characteristics of the Antarctic boundary layer challenge present and future numerical models to represent this region in a physically correct manner.

A conceptual model is used in combination with observational analysis to understand regime transitions of near-surface temperature inversions at night as well as in Arctic conditions. The model combines a surface energy budget with a bulk parameterization for turbulent heat transport. Energy fluxes or feedbacks due to soil and radiative heat transfer are accounted for by a "lumped parameter closure," which represents the "coupling strength" of the system. Observations from Cabauw, Netherlands, and Dome C, Antarctica, are analyzed. As expected, inversions are weak for strong winds, whereas large inversions are found under weak-wind conditions. However, a sharp transition is found between those regimes, as it occurs within a narrow wind range. This results in a typical S-shaped dependency. The conceptual model explains why this characteristic must be a robust feature. Differences between the Cabauw and Dome C cases are explained from differences in coupling strength (being weaker in the Antarctic). For comparison, a realistic column model is run. As findings are similar to the simple model and the observational analysis, it suggests generality of the results. Theoretical analysis reveals that, in the transition zone near the critical wind speed, the response time of the system to perturbations becomes large. As resilience to perturbations becomes weaker, it may explain why, within this wind regime, an increase of scatter is found. Finally, the so-called heat flux duality paradox is analyzed. It is explained why numerical simulations with prescribed surface fluxes show a dynamical response different from more realistic surface-coupled systems.