An efficient Lagrangian stochastic model of vertical dispersion in the convective boundary layer

We consider the one-dimensional case of vertical dispersion in the convective boundary layer (CBL) assuming that the turbulence field is stationary and horizontally homogeneous. The dispersion process is simulated by following Lagrangian trajectories of many independent tracer particles in the turbulent flow field, leading to a prediction of the mean concentration. The particle acceleration is determined using a stochastic differential equation, assuming that the joint evolution of the particle velocity and position is a Markov process. The equation consists of a deterministic term and a random term. While the formulation is standard, attention has been focused in recent years on various ways of calculating the deterministic term using the well-mixed condition incorporating the Fokker-Planck equation. Here we propose a simple parameterisation for the deterministic acceleration term by approximating it as a quadratic function of velocity. Such a function is shown to represent well the acceleration under moderate velocity skewness conditions observed in the CBL. The coefficients in the quadratic form are determined in terms of given turbulence statistics by directly integrating the Fokker-Planck equation. An advantage of this approach is that, unlike in existing Lagrangian stochastic models for the CBL, the use of the turbulence statistics up to the fourth order can be: made without assuming any predefined form for the probability distribution function (PDF) of the velocity. The main strength of the model, however, lies in its simplicity and computational efficiency. The dispersion results obtained from the new model are compared with existing laboratory data as well as with those obtained from a more complex Lagrangian model in which the deterministic acceleration term is based on a bi-Gaussian velocity PDF. The comparison shows that the new model performs well. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.