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Published on: February 3, 2014
A note concerning the Lighthill "sandwich model" of tropical cyclones
G I Barenblatt1, A J Chorin, V M Prostokishin
1Department of Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720-3840, USA. gibarenblatt@lbl.gov
Abstract:
The basic element of Lighthill's "sandwich model" of tropical cyclones is the existence of "ocean spray," a layer intermediate between air and sea made up of a cloud of droplets that can be viewed as a "third fluid." We propose a mathematical model of the flow in the ocean spray based on a semiempirical turbulence theory and demonstrate that the availability of the ocean spray over the waves in the ocean can explain the tremendous acceleration of the wind as a consequence of the reduction of the turbulence intensity by droplets. This explanation complements the thermodynamic arguments proposed by Lighthill.
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