For inviscid, adiabatic flow the angular momentum, energy and enstrophy are all conserved. For actual hurricane flows, frictional and diabatic effects are important, and all three of the above quantities are no longer conserved. However, angular momentum and energy typically decay much more slowly than the enstrophy. This allows us to estimate the end state by formulating a variational problem which minimizes enstrophy while constraining the angular momentum and energy. Another approach (statistical mechanics) is to maximize the Boltzmann mixing entropy while constraining all the integral invariants of the inviscid problem. We shall present some solutions of these so-called MinEV and MaxSV theories and discuss how such concepts can help us understand hurricane mixing problems.
Note: We prefer that the three papers by Schubert et. al. (abstract number 1261), Kossin (this abstract), and Fulton, Schubert, Montgomery be grouped in the same session and presented in this order