Prof. Peter Read

Abstract:

Saturn's poles exhibit an unexpected symmetry in hot, cyclonic polar vortices, despite huge seasonal differences in solar flux. The cores of both vortices are depleted in phosphine gas, probably resulting from subsidence of air into the troposphere. The warm cores are present throughout the upper troposphere and stratosphere at both poles. The thermal structure associated with the marked hexagonal polar jet at 77 degrees N has been observed for the first time. Both the warm cyclonic belt at 79 degrees N and the cold anticyclonic zone at 75 degrees N exhibit the hexagonal structure.

Abstract:

Synchronization of periodic and chaotic oscillations between two coupled rotating baroclinic fluid systems will be presented. The numerical part of the study involves a pair of coupled two-layer quasigeostrophic models, and the experimental part comprises two thermally coupled baroclinic fluid annuli, rotating one above the other on the same turntable. Phase synchronization and imperfect synchronization (phase slips) have been found in both model and experiments, and model simulations also exhibit chaos-destroying synchronization. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Abstract:

We report an analog laboratory study of planetary-scale turbulence and jet formation. A rotating annulus was cooled and heated at its inner and outer walls, respectively, causing baroclinic instability to develop in the fluid inside. At high rotation rates and low temperature differences, the flow became chaotic and ultimately fully turbulent. The inclusion of sloping top and bottom boundaries caused turbulent eddies to behave like planetary waves at large scales, and eddy interaction with the zonal flow then led to the formation of several alternating jets at mid-depth. The jets did not scale with the Rhines length, and spectral analysis of the flow indicated a distinct separation between jets and eddies in wavenumber space, with direct energy transfer occurring nonlocally between them. Our results suggest that the traditional "turbulent cascade" picture of zonal jet formation may be an inappropriate one in the geophysically important case of large-scale flows forced by differential solar heating.

Abstract:

We present results from a computational study of predictability in fully-developed baroclinically unstable laboratory flows. This behaviour is studied in the Met Office/Oxford Rotating Annulus Laboratory Simulation a model of the classic rotating annulus laboratory experiment with differentially heated cylindrical sidewalls, which is firmly established as an insightful laboratory analogue for certain kinds of atmospheric dynamical behaviour. This work is the first study of 'predictability of the first kind' in the annulus experiment. We devise an ensemble prediction scheme using the breeding method to study the predictability of the annulus in the perfect model scenario. This scenario allows one simulation to be defined as the true state, against which all forecasts are measured. We present results from forecasts over a range of quasi-periodic and chaotic annulus flow regimes. A number of statistical and meteorological techniques are used to compare the predictability of these flows: bred vector growth rate and dimension, error variance, ''spaghetti plots", probability forecasts, Brier score, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. These techniques gauge both the predictability of the flow and the performance of the ensemble relative to a forecast using a climatological distribution. It is found that in the perfect model scenario, the two quasi-periodic regimes examined may be indefinitely predictable. The two chaotic regimes (structural vacillation and period doubled amplitude vacillation) show a loss of predictability on a timescale of hundreds to thousands of seconds (65-280 annulus rotation periods, or 1-3 Lyapunov times).