Marine Science Faculty Publications
Quasinormal Scale Elimination Theory of the Anisotropic Energy Spectra of Atmospheric and Oceanic Turbulence
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.5.063803
Abstract
Progress in the rapidly expanding exploration of planetary atmospheric and oceanic environments demands an adequate qualitative and quantitative representation of various processes in anisotropic turbulence. The existing analytical spectral theories are developed for homogeneous isotropic flows. They quickly become very complicated when expanded to anisotropic flows with waves. It is possible, however, to extend one such theory, the quasinormal scale elimination (QNSE), to stably stratified and rotating flows. Here the results of the theory are compared with a large variety of oceanic and atmospheric flows. These comparisons make it possible to clarify the physics of some processes governing the atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, quantify their spectra, and investigate their latitudinal and longitudinal variabilities. Some of the main results of this analysis are that vertical and horizontal spectra of atmospheric and oceanic turbulence can be derived within QNSE analytically; there exists a quantitative affinity between atmospheric and oceanic spectra; on large scales, spectral amplitudes are determined by the extra strains that cause flow anisotropization, rather than the energy or enstrophy fluxes; and planetary circulations appear to be amenable to classification as flows with compactified (compressed) dimensionality.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Physical Review Fluids, v. 5, art. 063803
Scholar Commons Citation
Galperin, Boris and Sukoriansky, Semion, "Quasinormal Scale Elimination Theory of the Anisotropic Energy Spectra of Atmospheric and Oceanic Turbulence" (2020). Marine Science Faculty Publications. 1513.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/msc_facpub/1513
