Senel, C. B.

PhD thesis supervised by Parente, Alessandro; van Beeck, Jeroen (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Abstract: The planetary boundary layer (PBL) is the turbulently most active part of the Earth’s and Martian lower atmospheres. Over the last few decades, high-resolution satellite and in-situ measurements, plus the rapid growth in the massive computing have provided a growing interest in this phenomenon, ranging from weather and climate studies to planetary science applications. Thanks to the ongoing lander and rover missions, in-situ observations of Martian surface processes, such as dust, water and methane transport, have been attracting more attention, especially in to search for the signatures of the planet’s habitability. This highlights the significance of PBL dynamics, which is the primary governor of surface-atmosphere exchange processes on Mars. The PBL, on the other hand, has various physical phenomena associated with a large range of length scales, from planetary scales to microscales. Therefore, the present thesis proposes a series of novel turbulence models in a multiscale framework to advance the current knowledge on the nature of PBL turbulence forming in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars. This study, for the first time, presents a novel scale-aware gray-zone turbulence, fully representing the three-dimensional turbulence fluxes in the so-called "Terra Incognita" range of scales, in which traditional turbulence models become invalid as they were initially designed for their own either mesoscale or microscale limits. Here, the new gray-zone turbulence model offers an advanced framework for bridging the mesoscale and microscale limits that is suitable for the development of next-generation three-dimensional multiscale turbulence models for Earth and Mars. The generic formulation of new turbulence models developed here is extensively applicable to a wide range of terrestrial planetary atmospheres, ranging from Saturn's moon Titan towards terrestrial exoplanets.

Keyword(s): Solar system ; Space science ; Atmospheric phenomena ; Climatology ; Astrophysics
Note: Jury Members: Karatekin, Ozgur; Temel, Orkun; Calmet, Isabelle; García-Sánchez, Clara; Muñoz-Esparza, Domingo; Hendrick, Patrick
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