Structure and spacing of jets in barotropic and baroclinic turbulence

Turbulent flows are often observed to be organized into large spatial scale jets such as the familiar zonal jets in the upper levels of the Jovian atmosphere and the Earth's polar jet. These relatively steady large scale jets are not forced coherently but are maintained by the much smaller spatial and temporal scale turbulence with which they coexist. The turbulence maintaining the jets may arise from exogenous sources such as small scale convection or from endogenous sources such as eddy generation associated with baroclinic development processes within the jet itself. Recently a comprehensive theory for the interaction of jets with turbulence has been developed (Stochastic Structural Stability Theory). In this talk SSST will be described and applied to the formation of multiple barotropic and baroclinic jets in turbulent atmospheres.