Publications related to Windward and leeward

Wind-tunnel experimental studies of the spatial snow distribution over grass and bush surfaces

The snow is one of the most important water resources in grassland in northern and western China, while the wind blowing snow due to the strong wind there is a common phenomenon, which can lead to heavy disasters to harm the local animal husbandry and tran ...

SPRINGER2022

The Importance of Near-Surface Winter Precipitation Processes in Complex Alpine Terrain

Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber

In this study, near-surface snow and graupel dynamics from formation to deposition are analyzed using WRF in a large-eddy configuration. The results reveal that a horizontal grid spacing of ≤50 m is required to resolve local orographic precipitation enhanc ...

2019

From the clouds to the ground - Effects of flow-precipitation interactions on snow distribution in complex alpine terrain

Franziska Gerber

Knowledge about the spatial distribution of seasonal snow is essential e.g. to efficiently manage fresh water resources or for hydro-power companies. The large-scale gradient of snow accumulation over mountain ranges is mainly determined by lifting condens ...

EPFL2018

Stochastic modeling of snow transport and hydrologic response in alpine terrain

Francesco Comola

The scientific community has developed a keen interest in the processes driving the hydrologic cycle in alpine regions. The concern mainly stems from the vulnerability of snow-covered environments to the warming temperatures, such that entire ecological an ...

EPFL2017

Optimal solution and asymptotic properties of a stochastic control problem arising in sailboat trajectory optimization

Carlo Ciccarella

We study the optimal strategy for a sailboat to reach an upwind island under the hypothesis that the wind direction fluctuates according to a Brownian motion and the wind speed is constant. The work is motivated by a concrete problem which typically arises ...

EPFL2017

Observations, theory, and modeling of the differential accumulation of Antarctic megadunes

Michael Lehning

Antarctic megadunes are characterized by significant spatial differences in accumulation rate, with higher accumulation on the windward side and near-zero accumulation on the lee side. This leads to spatial differences in physical properties of snow and su ...

Amer Geophysical Union2013

A new boundary condition for large-eddy simulation of boundary-layer flow over surface roughness transitions

Fernando Porté Agel, Mahdi Abkar

Large-eddy simulations are performed to evaluate the performance of the surface boundary condition downwind of a rough-to-smooth surface transition. Two types of boundary conditions are tested: (1) The standard formulation based on local application of the ...

Taylor & Francis2012