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Surface quasi-geostrophic dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2006

Isaac M. Held,
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert,
Stephen T. Garner and
Kyle L. Swanson
Isaac M. Held
Affiliation:
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
Affiliation:
Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Stephen T. Garner
Affiliation:
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA
Kyle L. Swanson
Affiliation:
Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
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Abstract

The dynamics of quasi-geostrophic flow with uniform potential vorticity reduces to the evolution of buoyancy, or potential temperature, on horizontal boundaries. There is a formal resemblance to two-dimensional flow, with surface temperature playing the role of vorticity, but a different relationship between the flow and the advected scalar creates several distinctive features. A series of examples are described which highlight some of these features: the evolution of an elliptical vortex; the start-up vortex shed by flow over a mountain; the instability of temperature filaments; the ‘edge wave’ critical layer; and mixing in an overturning edge wave. Characteristics of the direct cascade of the tracer variance to small scales in homogeneous turbulence, as well as the inverse energy cascade, are also described. In addition to its geophysical relevance, the ubiquitous generation of secondary instabilities and the possibility of finite-time collapse make this system a potentially important, numerically tractable, testbed for turbulence theories.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 282 , 10 January 1995, pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
© 1995 Cambridge University Press

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