Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the paperback edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 0 A guided tour through the book
- 1 Wavelet analysis: a new tool in physics
- 2 The 2-D wavelet transform, physical applications and generalizations
- 3 Wavelets and astrophysical applications
- 4 Turbulence analysis, modelling and computing using wavelets
- 5 Wavelets and detection of coherent structures in fluid turbulence
- 6 Wavelets, non-linearity and turbulence in fusion plasmas
- 7 Transfers and fluxes of wind kinetic energy between orthogonal wavelet components during atmospheric blocking
- 8 Wavelets in atomic physics and in solid state physics
- 9 The thermodynamics of fractals revisited with wavelets
- 10 Wavelets in medicine and physiology
- 11 Wavelet dimensions and time evolution
- Index
7 - Transfers and fluxes of wind kinetic energy between orthogonal wavelet components during atmospheric blocking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the paperback edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 0 A guided tour through the book
- 1 Wavelet analysis: a new tool in physics
- 2 The 2-D wavelet transform, physical applications and generalizations
- 3 Wavelets and astrophysical applications
- 4 Turbulence analysis, modelling and computing using wavelets
- 5 Wavelets and detection of coherent structures in fluid turbulence
- 6 Wavelets, non-linearity and turbulence in fusion plasmas
- 7 Transfers and fluxes of wind kinetic energy between orthogonal wavelet components during atmospheric blocking
- 8 Wavelets in atomic physics and in solid state physics
- 9 The thermodynamics of fractals revisited with wavelets
- 10 Wavelets in medicine and physiology
- 11 Wavelet dimensions and time evolution
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Atmospheric blocking is an irregularly recurring anomalous state of the atmospheric circulation which is large and spatially localized. Atmospheric blocking during three unusual winter months is studied by multiresolution analysis and a new periodic wavelet-based adaptation of traditional Fourier series-based energetics. New forms of the transfer functions of kinetic energy with the mean and eddy parts of the atmospheric circulation are introduced. These quantify the zonally localized conversion of energy between scales. A new accounting method for wavelet-indexed transfers permits the introduction of a physically meaningful zonally localized scale flux function. These techniques are applied to National Meteorological Center data. Blocking is found to be largely described by just the second-largest scale part of the multiresolution analysis. New support is found for the hypothesis that blocking is partially maintained by a particular kind of upscale cascade. Specifically, in both Atlantic and Pacific blocking cases there is a downscale (upscale) cascade west (east) of the block.
Introduction
Although wavelet analysis in the time domain has been applied to atmospheric boundary layer turbulence (e.g. [8]) and climatic time series (e.g. [3, 15, 17]), and in the space domain to numerically simulated turbulence [7, 9, 18], there has not been any application to observed global synoptic meteorological data. A broad review of wavelets applied to turbulence is presented by Farge et al., this volume, Chapter 4. A collection of blocking studies is contained in [1]. During blocking, the normal progression of weather is locally inhibited.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Wavelets in Physics , pp. 263 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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