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Coherent vortices and tracer cascades in two-dimensional turbulence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2007

ARMANDO BABIANO  and
ANTONELLO PROVENZALE
ARMANDO BABIANO
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Département de Géophysique de l'ENS de Paris, 24, rue Lhomond, 75005, Paris, [email protected]
ANTONELLO PROVENZALE
Affiliation:
Istituto di Scienze dell'Atmosfera e del Clima, CNR, Corso Fiume 4, 10133 Torino, [email protected]
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Abstract

We study numerically the scale-to-scale transfers of enstrophy and passive-tracer variance in two-dimensional turbulence, and show that these transfers display significant differences in the inertial range of the enstrophy cascade. While passive-tracer variance always cascades towards small scales, enstrophy is characterized by the simultaneous presence of a direct cascade in hyperbolic regions and of an inverse cascade in elliptic regions. The inverse enstrophy cascade is particularly intense in clusters of small-scales elliptic patches and vorticity filaments in the turbulent background, and it is associated with gradient-decreasing processes. The inversion of the enstrophy cascade, already noticed by Ohkitani (Phys. Fluids A, vol. 3, 1991, p. 1598), appears to be the main difference between vorticity and passive-tracer dynamics in incompressible two-dimensional turbulence.

Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 574 , 10 March 2007 , pp. 429 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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