Wednesday, 6 June 2001
Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in velocity
probability density functions (vpdfs) in geophysical turbulence and oceanic flows. Here we examine the vpdfs in a high resolution model of a quasi-geostrophic wind driven ocean basin. The shape of the vpdfs are studied in the various regions of the ocean basin as a function of Reynolds number. The results are compared to measurements made using
data from TOPEX/Poseidon (Gille and Llewellyn Smith, 2000 and
Llewellyn Smith and Gille, 1998) and from oceanic floats (Bracco et al., 2000).
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