Atmospheric Festivities

[guest]

Sometimes you have to admit, the atmosphere can get out of control. Click on the following Aqua/MODIS image and see how many cool features you can identify:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery...7.1015.500m.jpg

Enjoy,
Chris

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I like that picture because it really shows that the atmosphere is indeed a fluid! You can easily see the effects the mountains on the islands have on the flow aloft, in terms of wakes and eddys. Cool stuff!

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Actaully Jeff... I'm not so sure. Since the results of the second island look so much like flow around a cylinder...



My bet is that there exists a pretty strong inversion above the marine layer which is acting as an upper boundary to the flow. This keeps the flow in the lowest levels trapped and causes it too behave like the commonplace fluid mechanics example.

BTW the highest point on any of the islands is 1090m according to a quick google search.

Aaron

 

[David Wolfson]

Von Karman vortex streets were my high school science project many, many moons ago. They form in a range of intermediate Reynolds Numbers (flow not too slow or too fast -- just right) so I'd hypoth that the upstream island slows the flow enough to generate the vortex street in the lee of the second island. See: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/plan...eet_001213.html and http://www.enseeiht.fr/hmf/travaux/CD0102/...p1/num_simu.htm