Turbulence, in essence, consists of irregular fluid motions that vary greatly over time. In a large-scale environment, turbulence and other forces, such as atmospheric pressure and weather fronts, influence each other. "If you think of the jet stream," McWilliams says, "you might think it's there because equatorial regions are warmer and polar regions are cooler, a temperature gradient that makes a differential pressure gradient. Yet, if you follow that logic and try to fit it into mathematical equations, you find that's a highly unstable flow. Turbulence does something that changes the large-scale flow. To make a correct climate model, you need to characterize the roles of these large-scale turbulent motions."
Historically, mathematical physicists have believed turbulent movements were random and unstructured. As a result, they were unable to explain why Jupiter's Red Spot, a famous example of a long-lived turbulent vortex, has been around since Galileo's time. McWilliams believes that large-scale turbulence is inherently more structured than has been thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment