Velocity and temperature derivatives in high-Reynolds-number turbulent flows in the atmospheric surface layer. Part 1. Facilities, methods and some general results

This is a report on a field experiment in an atmospheric surface layer at heights between 0.8 and 10 m with the Taylor micro-scale Reynolds number in the range Re_λ = 1.6 - 6.6 × 10³. Explicit information is obtained on the full set of velocity and temperature derivatives both spatial and temporal, i.e. no use of Taylor hypothesis is made. The report consists of three parts. Part 1 is devoted to the description of facilities, methods and some general results. Certain results are similar to those reported before and give us confidence in both old and new data, since this is the first repetition of this kind of experiment at better data quality. Other results were not obtained before, the typical example being the so-called tear-drop R - Q plot and several others. Part 2 concerns accelerations and related matters. Part 3 is devoted to issues concerning temperature, with the emphasis on joint statistics of temperature and velocity derivatives. The results obtained in this work are similar to those obtained in experiments in laboratory turbulent grid flow and in direct numerical simulations of Navier-Stokes equations at much smaller Reynolds numbers Re_λ ∼ 10², and this similarity is not only qualitative, but to a large extent quantitative. This is true of such basic processes as enstrophy and strain production, geometrical statistics, the role of concentrated vorticity and strain, reduction of nonlinearity and non-local effects. The present experiments went far beyond the previous ones in two main respects. (i) All the data were obtained without invoking the Taylor hypothesis, and therefore a variety of results on fluid particle accelerations became possible. (ii) Simultaneous measurements of temperature and its gradients with the emphasis on joint statistics of temperature and velocity derivatives. These are reported in Parts 2 and 3.