AOS Faculty Profile
Stephen Garner
Lecturer, Ph.D. M.I.T.
Address: 234 GFDL
Phone: (609) 452-6543
Email: Steve.Garner at noaa.gov
Publications Vita
Tropospheric Dynamics at the “Mesoscale” where Planetary Rotation Has Only a Weak Control Over the Flow
Mesoscale phenomena in the troposphere are primarily due to surface forcing and moisture. I have worked on extreme cases of both topographic forcing and moist convection, namely, blocking events in the first instance and self-organizing squall lines in the second. In both phenomena, the modeling effort is complicated by a permanent alteration of far-field conditions by the disturbance.
I have investigated numerical forecasting methods that assimilate mesoscale data distributed in time as well as space. Four-dimensional assimilation “technologies” have been successful for large-scale prediction, but there are unique problems if the data are mesoscale. The additional degrees of freedom due to moisture, gravity-inertia waves, and other nongeostrophic phenomena add complexity and ambiguity to the problem of minimizing forecast error.
Some Recent Publications:
Garner, S.T., D.M.W. Frierson, I.M. Held, O. Pauluis and G.K. Vallis, 2007: Resolving convection in a global hypohydrostatic model. J. Atmos. Sci., 64, 2061-2075.
Philips, V. T. J., L. J. Donner, and S. T. Garner, 2007: Nucleation processes in deep convection simulated by a cloud-system-resolving model with double moment bulk microphysics. J. Atmos. Sci., 64, 738-761.
Knutson, T.R., J.J. Sirutis, S.T. Garner, I.M. Held and R.E. Tuleya, 2007: Simulation of the recent multi-decadal increase of Atlantic hurricane activity using an 18-km grid regional model. Bull. of the Amer. Met. Soc., to appear.
Pauluis, O,. and S.T. Garner, 2006: Sensitivity of radiative-convective equilibrium simulations to horizontal resolution. J. Atmos Sci., 63, 1910-1923.
Garner, S.T., 2005: A topographic drag closure built on an analytical base flux. J. Atmos. Sci., 62 2302-2315.