Abstract
We present numerical simulations of decaying two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional quasigeostrophic (3D QG) turbulence. The resulting vorticity fields are decomposed into three components: the vortex cores, the strain cells, and the background. In 2D, the vortex cores induce five times the energy as the background, while in 3D QG the background plays a more dominant role and induces the same amount of energy as the vortex cores, quantifying previous observations that 3D QG has a more active filamentary background. The probability density function of the total velocity field is nearly Gaussian in 3D QG but significantly less so in 2D. In both 2D and 3D QG, the velocities induced by the vortex cores and the strain cells are non-Gaussian. In both 2D and 3D QG turbulence, the enstrophy spectrum of the background is close to k−1 predicted by inverse cascade theories.
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