AbstractThe diabatic and frictional components of the PV fluxes J in the Haynes‐McIntyre conservation law have been studied with physical arguments, scaling laws and numerical simulations. We suggest a procedure that expresses J in terms of buoyancy and momentum fluxes by small‐scale turbulence SS, submesoscales SM and mesoscales M. We employ the latest parameterizations of these processes and derive analytic expressions of the diabatic and frictional J fluxes for arbitrary wind stresses; we then consider the case of an Ekman flow. Small‐scale turbulence: at z=0, down and up‐front winds contribute equally to the frictional component of J while the diabatic component is much larger than that of mesoscales. Submesoscales: the geostrophic contributions to both diabatic and frictional J have the same sign while the wind contributions have opposite signs. Their magnitude depends on the SM kinetic energy which is derived in terms of large‐scale parameters. Comparison with numerical simulations is limited since the ones available resolve M but not SM. They concluded that the field patterns of the J fluxes are very similar to those obtained without resolving M, in agreement with the present analysis; a second conclusion that the diabatic component of J is an order of magnitude larger than the frictional one, is also in accordance with present results. When wind stresses are accounted for, down‐front winds lower PV and up‐front winds increase it. The changes in Hoskins' criterion for the onset of symmetric instabilities are discussed.