Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics

Abstract:

The banded organization of clouds and zonal winds in the atmospheres of the outer planets has long fascinated observers. Several recent studies in the theory and idealized modeling of geostrophic turbulence have suggested possible explanations for the emergence of such organized patterns, typically involving highly anisotropic exchanges of kinetic energy and vorticity within the dissipationless inertial ranges of turbulent flows dominated (at least at large scales) by ensembles of propagating Rossby waves. The results from an attempt to reproduce such conditions in the laboratory are presented here. Achievement of a distinct inertial range turns out to require an experiment on the largest feasible scale. Deep, rotating convection on small horizontal scales was induced by gently and continuously spraying dense, salty water onto the free surface of the 13-m-diameter cylindrical tank on the Coriolis platform in Grenoble, France. A "planetary vorticity gradient" or "β effect" was obtained by use of a conically sloping bottom and the whole tank rotated at angular speeds up to 0.15 rad s-1. Over a period of several hours, a highly barotropic, zonally banded large-scale flow pattern was seen to emerge with up to 5-6 narrow, alternating, zonally aligned jets across the tank, indicating the development of an anisotropic field of geostrophic turbulence. Using particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques, zonal jets are shown to have arisen from nonlinear interactions between barotropic eddies on a scale comparable to either a Rhines or "frictional" wavelength, which scales roughly as (β/Urms) -1/2. This resulted in an anisotropic kinetic energy spectrum with a significantly steeper slope with wavenumber k for the zonal flow than for the nonzonal eddies, which largely follows the classical Kolmogorov k-5/3 inertial range. Potential vorticity fields show evidence of Rossby wave breaking and the presence of a "hyperstaircase" with radius, indicating instantaneous flows that are supercritical with respect to the Rayleigh-Kuo instability criterion and in a state of "barotropic adjustment." The implications of these results are discussed in light of zonal jets observed in planetary atmospheres and, most recently, in the terrestrial oceans. © 2007 American Meteorological Society.

Abstract:

Against a backdrop of intensive exploration of the Martian surface environment, intehded to lead to human exploration, some aspects of the modern climate and the meteorology of Mars remain relatively unexplored. In particular, there is a need for detailed measurements of the vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, dust, and condensates to understand the intricately related processes upon which the surface conditions, and those encountered during descent by landers, depend. The most important of these missing data are accurate and extensive temperature measurements with high vertical resolution. The Mars Climate Sounder experiment on the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, described here, is the latest attempt to characterize the Martian atmosphere with the sort of coverage and precision achieved by terrestrial weather satellites. If successful, it is expected to lead to corresponding improvements in our understanding of meteorological phenomena and to enable improved general circulation models of the Martian atmosphere for climate studies on a range of timescales. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.

Abstract:

A superrotating atmosphere with equatorial winds of ∼35 m s-1 is simulated using a simplified Venus general circulation model (GCM). The equatorial superrotation in the model atmosphere is maintained by barotropic instabilities in the midlatitude jets which transport angular momentum toward the equator. The midlatitude jets are maintained by the mean meridional circulation, and the momentum transporting waves are qualitatively similar to observed midlatitude waves; an equatorial Kelvin wave is also present in the atmosphere. The GCM is forced by linearized cooling and friction parameterizations, with hyperdiffusion and a polar Fourier filter to maintain numerical stability. Atmospheric superrotation is a robust feature of the model and is spontaneously produced without specific tuning. A strong meridional circulation develops in the form of a single Hadley cell, extending from the equator to the pole in both hemispheres, and from the surface to 50 km altitude. The zonal jets produced by this circulation reach 45 m s-1 at 60 km, with peak winds of 35 m s-1 at the equator. A warm pole and cold collar are also found in the GCM, caused by adiabatic warming in the mean meridional circulation. Wave frequencies and zonal wind speeds are smaller than in observations by cloud tracking but are consistent with a Doppler shifting by wind speeds in the generating region of each wave. Magnitudes of polar temperature anomalies are smaller than the observed features, suggesting dynamical processes alone may not be sufficient to maintain the large observed temperature contrasts at the magnitudes and periods found in this GCM. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.

Abstract:

In this study an experimental investigation of baroclinic waves in air in a differentially heated rotating annulus is presented. Air has a Prandtl number of 0.707, which falls within a previously unexplored region of parameter space for baroclinic instability. The flow regimes encountered include steady waves, periodic amplitude vacillations, modulated amplitude vacillations, and either monochromatic or mixed wave number weak waves, the latter being characterized by having amplitudes less than 5% of the applied temperature contrast. The distribution of these flow regimes in parameter space are presented in a regime diagram. It was found that the progression of transitions between different regimes is, as predicted by recent numerical modeling results, in the opposite sense to that usually found in experiments with high Prandtl number liquids. No hysteresis in the flow type, with respect to variations in the rotation rate, was found in this investigation.