Transition from geostrophic turbulence to inertia-gravity waves in the atmospheric energy spectrum.

ABSTRACT: Midlatitude fluctuations of the atmospheric winds on scales of thousands of kilometers, the most energetic of such fluctuations, are strongly constrained by the Earth's rotation and the atmosphere's stratification. As a result of these constraints, the flow is quasi-2D and energy is trapped at large scales—nonlinear turbulent interactions transfer energy to larger scales, but not to smaller scales. Aircraft observations of wind and temperature near the tropopause indicate that fluctuations at horizontal scales smaller than about 500 km are more energetic than expected from these quasi-2D dynamics. We present an analysis of the observations that indicates that these smaller-scale motions are due to approximately linear inertia-gravity waves, contrary to recent claims that these scales are s

SUBMITTER: Callies J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4260586 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature