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Some specific features of atmospheric tubulence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2006

A. M. Oboukhov
Affiliation:
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Moscow

Abstract

The spectrum of atmospheric turbulence is very broad by comparison with spectra in wind tunnels. We introduce the notion of small-scale and large-scale turbulence. Small-scale turbulence consists of a set of disturbances, the scales of which do not exceed the distance to the wall and for which the hypothesis of three-dimensional isotropy is valid in a certain rough approximation. Large-scale turbulence is essentially anisotropic; the horizontal scale in the atmosphere is much larger than the vertical one, the latter being confined to a certain characteristic height H. The horizontal scale varies widely according to the external conditions and characteristics of the medium.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1962 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Editors’ footnote. This paper is a record of part of a lecture given by the author at the IUGG-IUTAM Symposium on Fundamental Problems in Turbulence and their Relation to Geophysics, at Marseilles in September 1961. The part reproduced here concerns the local structure of turbulence in general, and was related to a lecture given by A. N Kolmogorov at another symposium in the prceding week (see the following paper in this journal). The two lectures are being included in the published record of the proceedings of the respective Symposia, and are published here also in view of their interest to a large number of English-speaking readers.

References

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