Unravelling turbulence in planetary atmospheres
Jupiter (mission Juno)
A specific feature of turbulence in quasi-2D flows is the spontaneous emergence of large scale coherent structures, such as those observed in planetary atmospheres, for instance. An article was published in Quanta Magazine and wired.com, which summarizes the recent progress in the field, and features in particular the work by three researchers from the Physics Laboratory: Freddy Bouchet and Eric Woillez on the one hand, and Corentin Herbert (in collaboration with Anna Frishman, Princeton University) on the other hand. Their work has allowed to compute explicitly the velocity profile in planetary jets and the turbulent kinetic energy in large scale vortices.
Original papers:
- “Theoretical prediction of Reynolds stresses and velocity profiles for barotropic turbulent jets”, E. Woillez and F. Bouchet, EPL 118:5 (2017)
- “Turbulence Statistics in a Two-Dimensional Vortex Condensate”, Anna Frishman and Corentin Herbert, PRL 120, 204505 (2018)