Laboratory experiments on fronts |
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| Authors: | R W Griffiths P F Linden |
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| Institution: | Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics , University of Cambridge , CB3 9EW, UK |
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| Abstract: | Abstract Supercritically unstable density fronts near a vertical wall in a rotating, two-layer fluid were created on a laboratory turntable by withdrawing the outer wall of an annulus with a narrow gap, and allowing buoyant fluid from within the annulus to collapse toward a state of quasi-geostrophic balance. The resulting “coastal” current has a nearly uniform potential vorticity and is bounded by a front on which ageostrophic, wave-like disturbances grow. If the current width is comparable to the Rossby radius of deformation, the dominant length scale of disturbances is proportional to the width of the current. On the other hand, if the upper layer is much wider than the Rossby radius, then the observed length scale is a constant multiple of the Rossby radius. If the vertical boundary is omitted in the experiments, so that we are left with a circular anticyclonic vortex, the observed length scales and large-amplitude behaviour of disturbances are identical to those for the boundary currents, indicating that the wall has no significant influence on the flow. At very large amplitude the growing waves lead to the formation of cyclone-anticyclone vortex pairs. For very wide currents, both the mean flow and the disturbances are first confined to a region within a few Rossby radii of the front. However, both the mean flow and the turbulent eddy motions slowly propagate into the previously stationary upper layer until, eventually, the whole of the upper layer is turbulent. |
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| Keywords: | Tangential discontinuities force-free fields helicity |
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