event
Tuesday 14 Jul 2020: Stability of jets and vortices in Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics
Prof. Fancis Poulin - University of Waterloo
Online - contact A. Hillier for webinar link 14:30-15:30
Jets and vortices play a pivotal role in transporting and mixing fluid properties in many geophysical and astrophysical contexts. The primitive equations that model geophysical and astrophysical fluids are very similar and can be used to describe many different mechanisms, however, they are very complicated and thus it is difficult to study one process in isolation. Idealized models are inherently simpler and can answer very specific questions much more easily.
Quasi-Geostrophy is a well established model in geophysics that has greatly helped the scientific community in better understanding many aspects of meteorology and oceanography, including weather prediction. Quasi-Geostrophic Magnetohydrodynamics (QG MHD) was recently derived by Zeitlin (2013) as a subset of Gilman’s (2000) Shallow Water Magnetohydrodynamic model for the solar tachocline. In this seminar, I will present the QG MHD model and show how it can be used to investigate the stability of jets and vortices that might appear in the tachocline. My experience is mostly in the stability of geophysical flows and I have only recently been migrating to investigate the stability of astrophysical flows. Any feedback from researchers in astrophysics would be greatly appreciated.
