Energetics of diabatic mesoscale circulation: A numerical study

Mesoscale circulations, induced by mesoscale available potential energy diabatically generated in the boundary layer are studied through the numerical integration of primitive equations. The energetics of a sea-breeze simulation is studied in some detail. After 12 hours of simulation the kinetic energy is about a quarter of the mesoscale available potential energy diabatically produced. We comment on the energy lost by the upstream difference scheme, and on some aspects of the unavailability of available potential energy in such a system that together describe this level of inefficiency.