Related papers: Beta-plane turbulence: experiments with altimetry
Results from the laboratory experiments on the evolution of baroclinically unstable flows generated in a rotating tank with topographic beta-effect are presented. We study zonal jets of alternating direction which occur in these flows. The…
Results from the laboratory experiments on the evolution of vortices (eddies) generated in a rotating tank with topographic beta-effect are presented. The surface elevation and velocity fields are measured by the Altimetric Imaging…
Results from a new series of experiments on flows generated by localized heating in the presence of a background zonal current on the polar beta-plane are presented. The flow induced by a heater without the background zonal flow is in the…
The dynamics, structure and stability of zonal jets in planetary flows are still poorly understood, especially in terms of coupling with the small-scale turbulent flow. Here, we use an experimental approach to address the questions of zonal…
Results from a new series of experiments on turbulent flows in a rotating circular container are presented. Electromagnetic forcing is applied to induce flow in a layer of fluid of constant depth. Continuously forced as well as decaying…
Planetary turbulence is observed to self-organize into large-scale structures such as zonal jets and coherent vortices. One of the simplest models that retains the relevant dynamics of turbulent self-organization is a barotropic flow in a…
Planetary turbulent flows are observed to self-organize into large scale structures such as zonal jets and coherent vortices. One of the simplest models of planetary turbulence is obtained by considering a barotropic flow on a beta-plane…
Quasigeostrophic turbulence on a beta-plane with a finite deformation radius is studied nu- merically, with particular emphasis on frequency and combined wavenumber-frequency do- main analyses. Under suitable conditions, simulations with…
Zonal jets manifest themselves as bands with sharp interfaces in the vorticity configuration. We develop an algorithm to track these fluctuating vorticity interfaces and systematically investigate their characteristic spatio-temporal…
Intense east-west winds called zonal jets are observed in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn and extend in their deep interior. We present experimental results from a fully three-dimensional laboratory analog of deep gas giants zonal…
We report the quantitative experimental observation of the weak inertial-wave turbulence regime of rotating turbulence. We produce a statistically steady homogeneous turbulent flow that consists of nonlinearly interacting inertial waves,…
We investigated the dynamics of highly turbulent thermally driven anabatic (upslope) flow on a physical model inside a large water tank using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and a thermocouple grid. The results showed that the flow…
Plane inertial waves are generated using a wavemaker, made of oscillating stacked plates, in a rotating water tank. Using particle image velocimetry, we observe that, after a transient, the primary plane wave is subject to a subharmonic…
We present new experimental results on the development of turbulent spots in channel flow. The internal structure of a turbulent spot is measured, with Time Resolved Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry. We report the observation of…
We investigate the non-linear equilibration of a two-layer quasi-geostrophic flow in a channel forced by an imposed unstable zonal mean flow, paying particular attention to the role of bottom friction. In the limit of low bottom friction,…
The properties of bubble-laden turbulent flows at different scales are investigated experimentally, focusing on the flow kinetic energy, energy transfer, and extreme events. The experiments employed particle shadow velocimetry measurements…
The predictive power of mean-field theory is emphasized by comparing theory with simulations under controlled conditions. The recently developed test-field method is used to extract turbulent transport coefficients both in kinematic as well…
Low-order equal-time statistics of a barotropic flow on a rotating sphere are investigated. The flow is driven by linear relaxation toward an unstable zonal jet. For relatively short relaxation times, the flow is dominated by critical-layer…
We demonstrate that turbulent zonal jets, analogous to Jovian ones, which are quasi-stationary, are actually metastable. After extremely long times, they randomly switch to new configurations with a different number of jets. The genericity…
Zonal jets and non-zonal large-scale flows are often present in forced-dissipative barotropic turbulence on a beta-plane. The dynamics underlying the formation of both zonal and non-zonal coherent structures is investigated in this work…