Reinaud, J. N.; Dritschel, D. G.; Koudella, C. R. The shape of vortices in quasi-geostrophic turbulence. (English) Zbl 1022.76025 J. Fluid Mech. 474, 175-192 (2003). From the summary: The work discusses the most commonly occurring shape of coherent vortical structures in rapidly rotating stably stratified turbulence, under the quasi-geostrophic approximation. In decaying turbulence, these vortices – coherent regions of the materially-invariant potential vorticity – dominate the flow evolution, and indeed the flow evolution is governed by their interactions. An analysis of several exceptionally high-resolution simulations of quasi-geostrophic turbulence is performed. The results indicate that the population of vortices exhibits a mean height-to-width aspect ratio less than unity, in fact close to 0.8. This finding is justified here by a simple model, in which vortices are taken to be ellipsoids of uniform potential vorticity. Cited in 27 Documents MSC: 76F45 Stratification effects in turbulence 76U05 General theory of rotating fluids Keywords:coherent vortical structures; rapidly rotating stably stratified turbulence; quasi-geostrophic approximation; ellipsoids of uniform potential vorticity PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{J. N. Reinaud} et al., J. Fluid Mech. 474, 175--192 (2003; Zbl 1022.76025) Full Text: DOI