Physics – Fluid Dynamics
Scientific paper
Nov 1997
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997aps..dfd..eg04y&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting, November 23-25, 1997, abstract #Eg.04
Physics
Fluid Dynamics
Scientific paper
The Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter consists of a high speed ring of fluid moving circumferentially about a quiet interior. The vorticity as well as the potential vorticity (pv) have local minima at the center of the vortex. This ``hollow'' vortex is unstable with a fast time scale in both the shallow-water and quasi-geostrophic equations. However, it is a stable, statistically-steady flow when a Rayleigh friction with time scale τ is included and when the vortex is forced by mergers with small-area, large-pv vortices. Since the pv of the small vortices (as well as the pv of the entire GRS) decays with time, the region of largest pv is the location where the pv has most recently attached itself to the GRS, the outer edge of the vortex. This process creates a stable ``hollow'' vortex for suitable values of density, creation rate, size, and strength of the small-area vortices, the deformation radius, and τ. We explore the dynamics of how these vortices approach the GRS and attach to the outer edge. Vortices tend to remain in regions where the local shear has the same sign as the vorticity, while they disperse when embedded in opposite signed shear. Since there is often a region of adverse shear outside the larger vortex, the small-area vortices must overcome this barrier in order to attach.
Marcus Philip S.
Youssef Ahmed
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