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Quasigeostrophic and stratified turbulence in the atmosphere

  • Conference paper
IUTAM Symposium on Turbulence in the Atmosphere and Oceans

Part of the book series: IUTAM Bookseries ((IUTAMBOOK,volume 28))

Abstract

New simulations of rotating and stratified turbulence are presented. The goal of simulating a large-scale régime dominated by quasigeostrophic flow and a small-scale régime consistent with recent simulations of stratified turbulence was successfully achieved. Interestingly, the transition scale exhibited a scaling break in the energy spectrum much like that observed in the Gage-Nastrom atmospheric data. An attempt is made to situate objectively these results amongst a variety of others. The latter were obtained with atmospheric numerical models and observations and employed different techniques to separate the turbulence into quasigeostrophic (large-scale) and more general (small-scale) motions. Although the present idealised simulations agree with observations at this level, much of the atmospheric context is missing, there are other ways to produce the spectral scaling break and more observations are required.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Peter Bartello

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  1. Peter Bartello
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Correspondence to Peter Bartello .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Mathematics, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9SS, United Kingdom

    David Dritschel

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Bartello, P. (2010). Quasigeostrophic and stratified turbulence in the atmosphere. In: Dritschel, D. (eds) IUTAM Symposium on Turbulence in the Atmosphere and Oceans. IUTAM Bookseries, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0360-5_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0360-5_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0359-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0360-5

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