Related papers: Zonal flows as statistical equilibria
Basic physics of drift-wave turbulence and zonal flows has long been studied within the framework of wave-kinetic theory. Recently, this framework has been re-examined from first principles, which has led to more accurate yet still…
Stochastic Structural Stability Theory (S3T) provides analytical methods for understanding the emergence and equilibration of jets from the turbulence in planetary atmospheres based on the dynamics of the statistical mean state of the…
Quasilinear theory is often utilized to approximate the dynamics of fluids exhibiting significant interactions between mean flows and eddies. In this paper we present a generalization of quasilinear theory to include dynamic mode…
The work presented here focuses on the role of zonal flows in the self-sustenance of gravito-turbulence in accretion discs. The numerical analysis is conducted using a bespoke pseudo-spectral code in fully compressible, non-linear…
A novel and generic understanding of spontaneous generation of transport barriers and zonation regimes in turbulent self-organization is presented. It associates the barrier onset to the development of a spectral gap between large scale…
A remarkable feature of two-dimensional turbulence is the transfer of energy from small to large scales. This process can result in the self-organization of the flow into large, coherent structures due to energy condensation at the largest…
When an asymmetric bubble collapses it generally produces a well defined high velocity jet. This is remarkable because one might expect such a collapse to produce a complex or chaotic flow rather than an ordered one. I present a dimensional…
We study rapidly-rotating Boussinesq convection driven by internal heating in a full sphere. We use a numerical model based on the quasi-geostrophic approximation for the velocity field, whereas the temperature field is three-dimensional.…
A new, frequency modulation mechanism for zonal flow pattern formation is presented. The model predicts the probability distribution function of the flow strength as well as the evolution of the characteristic spatial scale. Magnetic…
We investigate some qualitative aspects of the dynamics of the Euler equation on a rotating sphere that are relevant or stratospheric flows. Zonal flow dominates the dynamics of the stratosphere and for most known planetary stratospheres…
Statistical mechanics provides an elegant explanation to the appearance of coherent structures in two-dimensional inviscid turbulence: while the fine-grained vorticity field, described by the Euler equation, becomes more and more filamented…
Giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn feature strong zonal wind patterns on their surfaces. Although several different mechanisms that may drive these jets have been proposed over the last decades, the origin of the zonal winds is still…
Zonal flows are mean flows in the east-west direction, which are ubiquitous on planets, and can be formed through 'zonostrophic instability': within turbulence or random waves, a weak large-scale zonal flow can grow exponentially to become…
The mean zonal flow observed on Jupiter consists of an intricate pattern of jets, or bands of zonal flow moving prograde or retrograde compared to the bulk planetary rotation. The strongest flow is a superrotating (prograde) jet near the…
The consequences of discrete particle noise for a system possessing a possibly unstable collective mode are discussed. It is argued that a zonostrophic instability (of homogeneous turbulence to the formation of zonal flows) occurs just…
The zonostrophic instability that leads to the emergence of zonal jets in barotropic beta-plane turbulence was analyzed through a geometric decomposition of the eddy stress tensor. The stress tensor is visualized by an eddy variance ellipse…
Turbulence-driven quasi-stationnary structures known as 'staircase' are investigated using the collisional drift-wave model. Two-dimensional simulations show that the ability of zonal density corrugations to suppress turbulence are affected…
Informed by LES data and resolvent analysis of the mean flow, we examine the structure of turbulence in jets in the subsonic, transonic, and supersonic regimes. Spectral (frequency-space) proper orthogonal decomposition is used to extract…
Stochastic dynamical systems arise as models for fluid particle motion in geophysical flows with random velocity fields. Escape probability (from a fluid domain) and mean residence time (in a fluid domain) quantify fluid transport between…
The global structure of the atmosphere and the oceans is a continuous source of intriguing challenges in geophysical fluid dynamics (GFD). Among these, jets are determinant in the air and water circulation around the Earth. In the last…