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AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Index Terms

  • Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Turbulence
  • Oceanography: Physical: Fronts and jets
  • Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Planetary meteorology
  • Planetology: Fluid Planets: Atmospheres—structure and dynamics

Abstract

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L13303, 5 PP., 2004
doi:10.1029/2004GL019691

The ubiquitous zonal jets in the atmospheres of giant planets and Earth's oceans

Boris Galperin

College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA

Hideyuki Nakano

Oceanographic Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Huei-Ping Huang

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA

Semion Sukoriansky

Department of Mechanical Engineering/Perlstone Center for Aeronautical Engineering Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

Recent eddy-permitting simulations of the North Pacific Ocean have revealed robust patterns of multiple zonal jets that visually resemble the zonal jets on giant planets. We argue that this resemblance is more than just visual because the energy spectrum of the oceanic jets obeys a power law that fits spectra of zonal flows on the outer planets. Remarkably, even the non-dimensional proportionality coefficient, C Z , determined by data under that spectral law, appears to be constant for all cases and approximately equal to 0.5. These results indicate that the multiple jet sets in the ocean and in the atmospheres of giant planets are governed by the same dynamics characterized by an anisotropic inverse energy cascade, i.e., the flow of energy from isotropic small-scale eddies to anisotropic large-scales structures, as well as the unique anisotropic spectrum. Implications of these results for climate research and future designs of observational missions are discussed.

Received 10 April 2004; accepted 4 June 2004; published 1 July 2004.

Citation: Galperin, B., H. Nakano, H.-P. Huang, and S. Sukoriansky (2004), The ubiquitous zonal jets in the atmospheres of giant planets and Earth's oceans, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13303, doi:10.1029/2004GL019691.

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