The Impacts of Effective Diffusion on the Axisymmetrization Process

The dynamics of vortex axisymmetrization from the perspective of thermal anomalies is investigated using two nonlinear numerical models. Attempts at reproducing the nonlinear modeling results of previous work (which used WRF, Nolan and Grasso 2003) revealed a discrepancy with the impacts of purely asymmetric forcing. Spectral momentum budgets and analysis reveals that differences in effective diffusion between the two models are likely the driving force behind these results. Implications of these results for idealized modeling of hurricanes will be discussed.