LES study on the applicability of the Taylor hypothesis in the urban boundary layer
Responsible: Yvonne Breitenbach
Project type: Diplomarbeit (equivalent to master thesis)
Duration: 31/03/2008-30/06/2009

Tower measurements only give direct information on the vertical and temporal structure of the urban atmosphere; horizontal information may be deduced using Taylor’s Hypothesis of frozen turbulence (Taylor, 1938). In vegetation canopy flow, however, the local mean velocity is an insufficient estimator for the convection velocity, and near the canopy Taylor’s Hypothesis is not applicable (Shaw et al., 1995). The stiff urban canopy poses the same questions: is Taylor’s Hypothesis valid, and if so, which is the best estimator for the convection velocity in the urban roughness sublayer?

To answer these questions, PALM directly evaluates and compares single-point and two-point statistics.