Fluid Exchange across a Meandering Jet Quasiperiodic Variability

Abstract

In this paper, the motion of fluid parcels in the two-dimensional kinematic model of a meandering jet developed by Bower and Samelson is studied. The earlier work is extended by considering quasiperiodic spatiotemporal variability in a reference frame moving with the phase speed of the meander. This necessitates the introduction of recently developed techniques in dynamical systems theory for analyzing transport in velocity fields with quasiperiodic variability. A detailed comparison between exchange for variability with one and two independent frequencies is given, and it is shown that the exchange rates may be very different for periodic and quasiperiodic variability.