Atmospheric turbulence in complex terrain: Verifying numerical model results with observations by remote-sensing instruments

The Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) is situated in an area of complex terrain. Turbulent flow due to terrain disruption could occur in the vicinity of HKIA when winds from east to southwest climb over Lantau Island, a mountainous island to the south of the airport. Low-level turbulence is an aviation hazard to the aircraft flying into and out of HKIA. It is closely monitored using remote-sensing instruments including Doppler LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) systems and wind profilers in the airport area. Forecasting of low-level turbulence by numerical weather prediction models would be useful in the provision of timely turbulence warnings to the pilots. The feasibility of forecasting eddy dissipation rate (EDR), a measure of turbulence intensity adopted in the international civil aviation community, is studied in this paper using the Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS). Super-high resolution simulation (within the regime of large eddy simulation) is performed with a horizontal grid size down to 50 m for some typical cases of turbulent airflow at HKIA, such as spring-time easterly winds in a stable boundary layer and gale-force southeasterly winds associated with a typhoon. Sensitivity of the simulation results with respect to the choice of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) parameterization scheme in RAMS is also examined. RAMS simulation with Deardorff (1980) TKE scheme is found to give the best result in comparison with actual EDR observations. It has the potential for real-time forecasting of low-level turbulence in short-term aviation applications (viz. for the next several hours).