Nonlinear behaviour of interacting mid-latitude atmospheric vortices

Nonlinear behaviour of interacting large-scale atmospheric vortices is considered. These vortices are approximately fifteen kilometres high and can have diameters of hundreds if not thousands of kilometres, and so they can be thought of as large flat structures. The air is weakly compressible, and t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of engineering mathematics Vol. 104; no. 1; pp. 41 - 62
Main Authors: Cosgrove, Jason M., Forbes, Lawrence K.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2017
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Aerodynamics
Applications of Mathematics
Compressibility
Computational fluid dynamics
Computational Mathematics and Numerical Analysis
Coriolis force
Earth rotation
Exponential functions
Inertial reference systems
Low pressure
Mathematical and Computational Engineering
Mathematical Modeling and Industrial Mathematics
Mathematical models
Mathematics
Mathematics and Statistics
Scaling laws
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Vortices
Binary interaction
76U05
Mid-latitude vortices
Spectral methods
76N99
ISSN:0022-0833, 1573-2703
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Nonlinear behaviour of interacting large-scale atmospheric vortices is considered. These vortices are approximately fifteen kilometres high and can have diameters of hundreds if not thousands of kilometres, and so they can be thought of as large flat structures. The air is weakly compressible, and the fluid motion is subject to the Coriolis pseudo-force, due to the Earth being in a non-inertial rotating reference frame. The vortices studied are coupled binary systems. The high or low pressure in each vortex is modelled initially using an exponential function. A spectral method is presented, for obtaining accurate numerical solutions. Nonlinear results in the f -plane approximation are discussed at mid-latitudes. It is found that the vortices do or do not interact, depending on their initial radii and the location of their centres. A scaling law is found numerically for the ratio of these two quantities, which determines whether interaction does occur.
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ISSN:0022-0833
1573-2703
DOI:10.1007/s10665-016-9871-9