Lattice Boltzmann and a new way to simulate Earth’s hydroclimate?

Following a paper I recently authored and based on my ongoing research and reading into continuum hydrodynamics at various Reynold numbers, it seems clear, and some past papers appear to describe to some extent, that the simple and elegant, Lattice  Boltzmann method can easily be fit to ongoing hydrospheric and planetary atmospheric circulation patterns.

I’ve produced the featured image and the remaining screenshots through a crude adaptation of the wonderful Matlab code string by Ian Haslam in 2006.  I’ve simply adjusted for a spinning surface and added the Coriolis effect with a crude approximation.  I’ve also placed “continental” zones in black patches.

It seems clear to me at least that these (perhaps accidentally) on-target constructions already appear to capture some classic patterns of planetary atmospheric circulation.  A distinctive polar convergence and northern hemisphere “jet stream” may be suggested, as well as a greater gyre-leaning pattern across the “ocean” east of the black “continent”.     The equatorial trough and flow reversal is not evidenced yet (among many other shortcomings) so I know that I still have a few things to work out before I approach a useful, accurate, simple and reproducible hydrospheric solar-driven circulation model this way, if it is even possible.  This is why a blog post is useful simply to share the interesting visual parts of very preliminary studies on my part.

Here is an example of Venus from  the Bruce Murray Space Image Library also featured in the previous link

References to be added.   a work in progress

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