Vortex core radius in baroclinic turbulence: Implications for scaling predictions

2023/08/29 by Gabriel Hadjerci, Hadjerci, Gabriel, Basile Gallet +1 · 1 citation
Engineering · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Climate variability and models

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.15398

Abstract

We revisit the vortex-gas scaling theory for heat transport by baroclinic turbulence based on the empirical observation that the vortex core radius departs from the Rossby deformation radius for very low bottom drag coefficient. We derive a scaling prediction for the vortex-core radius. For linear bottom drag this scaling dependence for the vortex-core radius does not affect the vortex-gas predictions for the eddy diffusivity and mixing-length, which remain identical to those in Gallet and Ferrari (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 117, 2020). By contrast, for quadratic drag the scaling dependence of the core radius induces new scaling-laws for the eddy diffusivity and mixing length when the quadratic-drag coefficient becomes asymptotically low. We validate the modified scaling predictions through numerical simulations of the two-layer model with very low quadratic-drag coefficient.

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