Studies of convection in geophysical flows constitute an advanced and rapidly developing area of research that is relevant to problems of the natural environment. Since the late 1980s, significant progress has been achieved in the field as a result of both experimental studies and numerical modelling. This led to the principal revision of the widely held view on buoyancy-driven turbulent flows comprising an organized mean component with superimposed chaotic turbulence. An intermediate type of motion, represented by coherent structures, has been found to play a key role in geophysical boundary layers and in larger scale atmospheric and hydrospheric circulations driven by buoyant forcing. New aspects of the interaction between convective motions and rotation have recently been discovered and investigated at the end of the 20th century. Extensive experimental data have also been collected on the role of convection in cloud dynamics and microphysics. New theoretical concepts and approaches have been outlined regarding scaling and parameterization of physical processes in buoyancy-driven geophysical flows. The book summarizes interdisciplinary studies of buoyancy effects in different media (atmosphere and hydrosphere) over a wide range of scales (small scale phenomena in unstably stratified and convectively mixed layers to deep convection in the atmosphere and ocean), by different research methods (field measurements, laboratory simulations, numerical modelling), and within a variety of application areas (dispersion of pollutants, weather forecasting and hazardous phenomena associated with buoyant forcing).

Studies of convection in geophysical flows constitute an advanced and rapidly developing area of research that is relevant to problems of the natural environment. During the last decade, significant progress has been achieved in the field as a result of both experimental studies and numerical modelling. This led to the principal revision of the widely held view on buoyancy-driven turbulent flows comprising an organised mean component with superimposed chaotic turbulence. An intermediate type of motion, represented by coherent structures, has been found to play a key role in geophysical boundary layers and in larger scale atmospheric and hydrospheric circulations driven by buoyant forcing. New aspects of the interaction between convective motions and rotation have recently been discovered and investigated. Extensive experimental data have also been collected on the role of convection in cloud dynamics and microphysics. New theoretical concepts and approaches have been outlined regarding scaling and parameterization of physical processes in buoyancy-driven geophysical flows. The book summarizes interdisciplinary studies of buoyancy effects in different media (atmosphere and hydrosphere) over a wide range of scales (small scale phenomena in unstably stratified and convectively mixed layers to deep convection in the atmosphere and ocean), by different research methods (field measurements, laboratory simulations, numerical modelling), and within a variety of application areas (dispersion of pollutants, weather forecasting, hazardous phenomena associated with buoyant forcing).

Out of the multitude of physical processes whose mechanisms depend on the interaction between the atmosphere and a lake, only those have been selected for discussion in this book which are inevitable in the mathematical modeling of lake hydrology and the microclimates, i.e., the meteorological regime over lakes and surrounding land. There are many reasons for a combined consideration of tile hydrological and meteorological aspects. First of all, they are essentially similar from a fluid mechanical point of view. Thus, the same phenomenon, viz., the turbulent plan etary boundary layer, is represented in lakes as the upper well-mixed water layer and in the atmosphere as the lower air layer directly influenced by thermal and dynamical action of the underlying surface. Processes at the air/water interface are equally important in energy transfer in both media. And finally, dynamical and thermal interaction between the adjoining atmospheric and lacustrine bound ary layers appears to be even stronger than between the upper and deep-water layers of a lake."