COSEE Ocean Systems: News
How Earth's Rotation Affects Vortices in Nature
Description: What do smoke rings, tornadoes and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter have in common? They are all examples of vortices, regions within a fluid (liquid, gas or plasma) where the flow spins around an imaginary straight or curved axis. Understanding how geophysical (natural world) vortices behave can be critical for tasks such as weather forecasting and environmental pollution monitoring. In a new paper researchers describe their study of one such geophysical vortex behavior, radiative instability, and how it is affected by two factors, density stratification and background rotation. [Source: American Institute of Physics (AIP) Newsroom on Newswise]
URL: http://www.newswise.com/articles/how-earth-s-rotation-affects-vortices-in-nature
Availability: Full Text
Source: American Institute of Physics (AIP) Newsroom on Newswise
Publish Date: 10/15/2013
Reading Level: Basic
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