HR: 17:50h
AN: A54A-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Non-normal Perspectives on Jet Stream Dynamics
AU: * Farrell, B F
EM: farrell@deas.harvard.edu
AF: Harvard University, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
AB: The Earth's mid-latitude jets and associated storm tracks constitute the most familiar and best observed of turbulent fluid systems as well as the most central to human comfort and commerce. Theoretical interest in turbulence as a phenomena and the practical utility of prediction of cyclogenesis and jet stream configuration have motivated efforts to understand both the deterministic dynamical evolution and the statistical properties of the jets and associated jet disturbances. Part of the fascination and challenge of understanding jet streams is that the jet disturbances arise from the jets and are steered by them while these same disturbances are themselves producing and maintaining the jets. It is commonly held that turbulent systems such as the mid- latitude jets are irreducibly complex in behavior but it turns out that in strong turbulence such as that of the jets there is emergent a particularly simple and orderly dynamics controlling jet structure and evolution. The method used to reveal this emergent underlying dynamics within jet turbulence, Stochastic Structural Stability Theory, will be described and illustrated with examples.
DE: 3364 Synoptic-scale meteorology
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly