scholarly journals Relation between Annular Modes and the Mean State: Southern Hemisphere Summer

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Codron

Abstract The annular modes emerge as the leading mode of extratropical month-to-month climate variability in both hemispheres. Here the influence of the background state on the structure and dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM) during the austral summer when the climatology is characterized by a single, well-defined, eddy-driven jet is studied. Subsets of the climatology are constructed for early and late summer, and for contrasting polarities of the ENSO cycle. The analysis is based both on observations and on perpetual-state GCM experiments. The main differences between the subsets involve variations of the latitude of the mean jet. It is found that in all the cases, the SAM is characterized by latitudinal shifts of the jet about its mean position, reinforced by a positive momentum flux feedback from baroclinic waves. This result is consistent with previous studies of the dynamics of the zonally averaged circulation but is found here to hold over all longitudes and for different positions of the mean jet. The low frequency eddies exert a weaker negative feedback upon the mean flow, with a less zonally symmetric structure. The strong differences in the amplitude of the SAM among the various climatologies seem to be determined by a combination of 1) the variance of the “random” forcing by transient eddies and 2) the strength of the positive feedback component of this forcing. The latter mechanism increases the variance at low frequencies only and lengthens the decorrelation time of zonal-mean zonal wind anomalies. It tends to become stronger when the mean jet moves equatorward.

2007 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 3328-3339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Codron

Abstract In a zonally symmetric climatology with a single eddy-driven jet, such as prevails in the Southern Hemisphere summer, the midlatitude variability is dominated by fluctuations of the jet around its mean position, as described by the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM). To study whether this result holds for a zonally asymmetric climatology, the observed variability of the Southern Hemisphere winter is analyzed. The mean state in this case is characterized by relatively weak stationary waves; yet there exist significant zonal variations in the mean strength and meridional structure of the subtropical jet stream. As in summer, the winter SAM signature is annular in shape and the corresponding wind anomalies are dipolar; but it is associated with two different behaviors of the eddy-driven jet in different longitudinal ranges. Over the Indian Ocean, the SAM is associated primarily with a latitudinal shift of the jet around its mean position. Over the Pacific sector, it is instead characterized by a seesaw in the wind speed between two distinct latitudes, corresponding to the positions of the midlatitude and subtropical jets. Composites of eddy forcing and baroclinicity over both sectors appear consistent with the two different behaviors. As in the zonal-mean case, high-frequency eddies both force and maintain the low-frequency wind anomalies associated with the SAM. The positive feedback by eddies is, however, not local: changes in the eddy forcing are influenced most strongly by zonal wind anomalies located upstream.


2012 ◽  
Vol 695 ◽  
pp. 199-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Goldstein ◽  
Adrian Sescu ◽  
M. Z. Afsar

AbstractIt is now well-known that there is an exact formula relating the far-field jet noise spectrum to the convolution product of a propagator (that accounts for the mean flow interactions) and a generalized Reynolds stress autocovariance tensor (that accounts for the turbulence fluctuations). The propagator depends only on the mean flow and an adjoint vector Green’s function for a particular form of the linearized Euler equations. Recent numerical calculations of Karabasov, Bogey & Hynes (AIAA Paper 2011-2929) for a Mach 0.9 jet show use of the true non-parallel flow Green’s function rather than the more conventional locally parallel flow result leads to a significant increase in the predicted low-frequency sound radiation at observation angles close to the downstream jet axis. But the non-parallel flow appears to have little effect on the sound radiated at $9{0}^{\ensuremath{\circ} } $ to the downstream axis. The present paper is concerned with the effects of non-parallel mean flows on the adjoint vector Green’s function. We obtain a low-frequency asymptotic solution for that function by solving a very simple second-order hyperbolic equation for a composite dependent variable (which is directly proportional to a pressure-like component of this Green’s function and roughly corresponds to the strength of a monopole source within the jet). Our numerical calculations show that this quantity remains fairly close to the corresponding parallel flow result at low Mach numbers and that, as expected, it converges to that result when an appropriately scaled frequency parameter is increased. But the convergence occurs at progressively higher frequencies as the Mach number increases and the supersonic solution never actually converges to the parallel flow result in the vicinity of a critical- layer singularity that occurs in that solution. The dominant contribution to the propagator comes from the radial derivative of a certain component of the adjoint vector Green’s function. The non-parallel flow has a large effect on this quantity, causing it (and, therefore, the radiated sound) to increase at subsonic speeds and decrease at supersonic speeds. The effects of acoustic source location can be visualized by plotting the magnitude of this quantity, as function of position. These ‘altitude plots’ (which represent the intensity of the radiated sound as a function of source location) show that while the parallel flow solutions exhibit a single peak at subsonic speeds (when the source point is centred on the initial shear layer), the non-parallel solutions exhibit a double peak structure, with the second peak occurring about two potential core lengths downstream of the nozzle. These results are qualitatively consistent with the numerical calculations reported in Karabasov et al. (2011).


Author(s):  
Sahib Singh Chawla

The laminar boundary layer on a magnetized plate, when the magnetic field oscillates in magnitude about a constant non-zero mean, is analysed. For low-frequency fluctuations the solution is obtained by a series expansion in terms of a frequency parameter, while for high frequencies the flow pattern is of the ‘skin-wave’ type unaffected by the mean flow. In the low-frequency range, the phase lead and the amplitude of the skin-friction oscillations increase at first and then decrease to their respective ‘skin-wave’ values. On the other hand the phase angle of the surface current decreases from 90° to 45° and its amplitude increases with frequency.


2002 ◽  
Vol 283 (3) ◽  
pp. R653-R662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Edwards ◽  
J. Kevin Shoemaker ◽  
Richard L. Hughson

Transfer function analysis of the arterial blood pressure (BP)-mean flow velocity (MFV) relationship describes an aspect of cerebrovascular autoregulation. We hypothesized that the transfer function relating BP to cerebrovascular resistance (CVRi) would be sensitive to low-frequency changes in autoregulation induced by head-up tilt (HUT) and altered arterial Pco 2. Nine subjects were studied in supine and HUT positions with end-tidal Pco 2(Pet CO2 ) kept constant at normal levels: +5 and −5 mmHg. The BP-MFV relationship had low coherence at low frequencies, and there were significant effects of HUT on gain only at high frequencies and of Pco 2 on phase only at low frequencies. BP → CVRi had coherence >0.5 from very low to low frequencies. There was a significant reduction of gain with increased Pco 2 in the very low and low frequencies and with HUT at the low frequency. Phase was affected by Pco 2 in the very low frequencies. Transfer function analysis of BP → CVRi provides direct evidence of altered cerebrovascular autoregulation under HUT and higher levels of Pco 2.


2016 ◽  
Vol 788 ◽  
pp. 521-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. R. Joel Sundstrom ◽  
Berhanu G. Mulu ◽  
Michel J. Cervantes

Wall shear stress measurements employing a hot-film sensor along with laser Doppler velocimetry measurements of the axial and tangential velocity and turbulence profiles in a pulsating turbulent pipe flow are presented. Time-mean and phase-averaged results are derived from measurements performed at pulsation frequencies ${\it\omega}^{+}={\it\omega}{\it\nu}/\bar{u}_{{\it\tau}}^{2}$ over the range of 0.003–0.03, covering the low-frequency, intermediate and quasi-laminar regimes. In addition to the base case of a single pulsation imposed on the mean flow, the study also investigates the flow response when two pulsations are superimposed simultaneously. The measurements from the base case show that, when the pulsation belongs to the quasi-laminar regime, the oscillating flow tends towards a laminar state in which the velocity approaches the purely viscous Stokes solution with a low level of turbulence. For ${\it\omega}^{+}<0.006$, the oscillating flow is turbulent and exhibits a region with a logarithmic velocity distribution and a collapse of the turbulence intensities, similar to the time-averaged counterparts. In the low-frequency regime, the oscillating wall shear stress is shown to be directly proportional to the Stokes length normalized in wall units $l_{s}^{+}~(=\sqrt{2/{\it\omega}^{+}})$, as predicted by quasi-steady theory. The base case measurements are used as a reference when evaluating the data from the double-frequency case and the oscillating quantities are shown to be close to superpositions from the base case. The previously established view that the time-averaged quantities are unaffected by the imposition of small-amplitude pulsed unsteadiness is shown to hold also when two pulsations are superposed on the mean flow.


2012 ◽  
Vol 699 ◽  
pp. 320-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Malm ◽  
Philipp Schlatter ◽  
Dan S. Henningson

AbstractDominant frequencies and coherent structures are investigated in a turbulent, three-dimensional and separated diffuser flow at $\mathit{Re}= 10\hspace{0.167em} 000$ (based on bulk velocity and inflow-duct height), where mean flow characteristics were first studied experimentally by Cherry, Elkins and Eaton (Intl J. Heat Fluid Flow, vol. 29, 2008, pp. 803–811) and later numerically by Ohlsson et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 650, 2010, pp. 307–318). Coherent structures are educed by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of the flow, which together with time probes located in the flow domain are used to extract frequency information. The present study shows that the flow contains multiple phenomena, well separated in frequency space. Dominant large-scale frequencies in a narrow band $\mathit{St}\equiv fh/ {u}_{b} \in [0. 0092, 0. 014] $ (where $h$ is the inflow-duct height and ${u}_{b} $ is the bulk velocity), yielding time periods ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast} } = T{u}_{b} / h\in [70, 110] $, are deduced from the time signal probes in the upper separated part of the diffuser. The associated structures identified by the POD are large streaks arising from a sinusoidal oscillating motion in the diffuser. Their individual contributions to the total kinetic energy, dominated by the mean flow, are, however, small. The reason for the oscillating movement in this low-frequency range is concluded to be the confinement of the flow in this particular geometric set-up in combination with the high Reynolds number and the large separated zone on the top diffuser wall. Based on this analysis, it is shown that the bulk of the streamwise root mean square (r.m.s.) value arises due to large-scale motion, which in turn can explain the appearance of two or more peaks in the streamwise r.m.s. value. The weak secondary flow present in the inflow duct is shown to survive into the diffuser, where it experiences an imbalance with respect to the upper expanding corners, thereby giving rise to the asymmetry of the mean separated region in the diffuser.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Lubis ◽  
Pedram Hassanzadeh

&lt;p&gt;Some types of extreme events&lt;span&gt; in the extratropics are often associated with anomalous jet behaviors. A well-known example is the annular mode, wherein its variation e.g., the meandering in the north-south direction of the jet, disrupts the normal eastward migration of troughs and ridges.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;Since the seminal works of Lorenz and Hartmann, the annular mode has been mostly analyzed based on single EOF mode. However, a recent study showed that the first and second leading EOFs are strongly correlated at long lags and are manifestations of a single oscillatory decaying-mode. This means that the first and second leading EOF modes interact and exert feedbacks on each other. The purpose of this study is to develop an eddy-feedback model for the extratropical low-frequency variability that includes these cross-EOF feedbacks to better isolate the eddy momentum/heat flux changes with time- and/or zonal-mean flow. Our results show that, in the presence of the poleward-propagation regime, the first and second leading EOF modes interact and exert positive feedbacks at lags ~10 (~20) days about ~0.07 (~0.16) day&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; in the reanalysis (idealized GCM). This feedback is often ignored in the previous studies, and in fact, the magnitude is nearly double the feedback exerted by the single EOF mode. We found that this apparent positive eddy feedback is a result of the effect of jet pulsation (strengthening and weakening) in zonal flow variability (z&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;) on the eddy momentum flux due to the meandering in the north-south direction of the jet (m&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;). A finite-amplitude eddy-mean flow interaction diagnostic has been performed to demonstrate the dynamics governing the positive feedback in the propagating regime of the annular modes. It is shown that the poleward propagation is caused by an orchestrated combination of equatorward propagation of wave activity (baroclinic process), nonlinear wave breaking (barotropic processes), and radiative relaxation. The latter two processes follow the first one, and as such, the meridional propagation of Rossby wave activity (likely generated by an enhanced baroclinic wave source at a low level) is the central mechanism. Finally, our model calculations suggest the rule of thumb that the propagating annular modes (i.e., when EOF1 and EOF2 together represent quasi-periodic poleward propagation of zonal-mean flow anomalies) exist if the ratio of the fractional variance and decorrelation time-scale of EOF2 to that of EOF1 exceeds 0.5 or the two leading PCs showing maximum correlations at larger lags. These criteria can be used to assess the predictability of preferred modes of extratropical circulation in GCMs. The present study advances and potentially transforms the state of our understanding of the low-frequency variability of the extratropical circulation.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;


2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 2095-2113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ru Chen ◽  
Glenn R. Flierl

AbstractLow-frequency oceanic motions have banded structures termed “striations.” Since these striations embedded in large-scale gyre flows can have large amplitudes, the authors investigated the effect of mean flow on their directions as well as their contribution to energetics and mixing using a β-plane, barotropic, quasigeostrophic ocean model. In spite of the model simplicity, striations are always found to exist regardless of the imposed barotropic mean flow. However, their properties are sensitive to the mean flow. Rhines jets move with the mean flow and are not necessarily striations. If the meridional component of the mean flow is large, Rhines jets become high-frequency motions; low-frequency striations still exist, but they are nonzonal, have small magnitudes, and contribute little to energetics and mixing. Otherwise, striations are zonal, dominated by Rhines jets, and contribute significantly to energetics and mixing. This study extends the theory of β-plane, barotropic turbulence, driven by white noise forcing at small scales, to include the effect of a constant mean flow. Theories developed in this study, based upon the Galilean invariance property, illustrate that the barotropic mean flow has no effect on total mixing rates, but does affect the energy cascades in the frequency domain. Diagnostic frameworks developed here can be useful to quantify the striations’ contribution to energetics and mixing in the ocean and more realistic models. A novel diagnostic formula is applied to estimating eddy diffusivities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1489-1507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Voet ◽  
Matthew H. Alford ◽  
Jennifer A. MacKinnon ◽  
Jonathan D. Nash

AbstractTowed shipboard and moored observations show internal gravity waves over a tall, supercritical submarine ridge that reaches to 1000 m below the ocean surface in the tropical western Pacific north of Palau. The lee-wave or topographic Froude number, Nh0/U0 (where N is the buoyancy frequency, h0 the ridge height, and U0 the farfield velocity), ranged between 25 and 140. The waves were generated by a superposition of tidal and low-frequency flows and thus had two distinct energy sources with combined amplitudes of up to 0.2 m s−1. Local breaking of the waves led to enhanced rates of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy reaching above 10−6 W kg−1 in the lee of the ridge near topography. Turbulence observations showed a stark contrast between conditions at spring and neap tide. During spring tide, when the tidal flow dominated, turbulence was approximately equally distributed around both sides of the ridge. During neap tide, when the mean flow dominated over tidal oscillations, turbulence was mostly observed on the downstream side of the ridge relative to the mean flow. The drag exerted by the ridge on the flow, estimated to for individual ridge crossings, and the associated power loss, thus provide an energy sink both for the low-frequency ocean circulation and the tidal flow.


2017 ◽  
Vol 145 (9) ◽  
pp. 3465-3483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken-Chung Ko ◽  
Jyun-Hong Liu

In this study, intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs) and submonthly wave patterns were separated into maximal variance (MaxV) and minimal variance (MinV) years on the basis of ISO variance from July to October. The mean-state 850-hPa streamfunction for submonthly cases indicated that, in the MinV years, tropical cyclones (TCs) formed near areas southeast of those in the MaxV years. ISOs propagated northward in the MaxV years, whereas a weaker westward-propagating tendency was observed in the MinV years. Track analysis of the centers of the submonthly cyclonic anomalies suggested that the background flow dictated the propagation routes of the easterly cyclonic anomalies in the MaxV years. However, the propagation routes of the westerly cyclonic anomalies were barely affected by the background flow. Further analysis of the ISO mean flow patterns showed that in the MaxV years, the propagation routes of the westerly cyclonic anomalies were more likely controlled by the anomalous easterly flow generated by the ISO westerly cyclonic anomalies. Moreover, rainfall was heavier in Taiwan in the MaxV years because the background flow in the MinV years caused the submonthly cyclonic anomaly tracks to shift away from Taiwan. Therefore, low-frequency large-scale circulations can affect smaller-scale phenomena and local weather.


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